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RFREBACE. 


During the year 1902-3 a series of Saturday afternoon conferences for pastors, 
addressed by Seminary Professors, was held at the Y. M. C. A. Hall in Providence. 
The subjects and speakers were as follows : — 

November 29, 1902. ‘*‘ The Unique Character of the Gospel of John”. Profess- 
or M. W. Jacobus, D.D., and Professor C. S. Beardslee, D.D., of Hartford Theo- 
logical Seminary. 

January 31, 1903. ‘‘ The Grace and Truth that came by Jesus Christ”. (John 
1:17 and 1:14). Professor George B. Stevens, D.D., and Professor Frank K. 
Sanders, D.D., of the Yale Divinity School. 

March 7. ‘‘Johannine Antitheses”. Professor Henry C. Sheldon, S.T.D., 
of the Boston University School of Theology. 

April 18. ‘‘The Father, the Saviour, the Comforter”. (John 14). Professor 
William H. Ryder, D.D., of Andover Theological Seminary. 

May 16. ‘‘ That they all may be one”. (John 17). President W- H. P. 
Faunce, D.D., and Professor Henry T. Fowler, Ph.D., of Brown University. 

Several of the above named Professors spoke in churches of the city on themes 
in John’s Gospel on the Sundays following the Conferences. 

* Previous to this series of conferences many pastors in Rhode Island had 
taken up this Gospel in the mid-week meeting of the church. Dr. Henry M. King, 
Pastor of the First Baptist Church, of Providence, in introducing Professors 
Jacobus and Beardslee at the first of the above mentioned conferences spoke as 
follows concerning the experience of his own church the preceding year :— 

**T have never had a year of such prayer meetings in all my ministry. The 
attendance has been increased and an unusually large number of people have taken 


* A series of monthly conferences had also been held in South-Western Washington County, R. I., 
under the auspices of a Washington County Interdenominational Committee of which Rev. Alexander 
McLearn, Pastor of the Seventh Day Baptist Church of Rockville, R. I., was chairman, The study of the 
Gospel was begun on December 4, 1900 (Rockville), and completed July 24, r9g0r. Between these dates over 
fifty conferences were held in fifteen different villages, three of these being held in Connecticut. Three 
chapters were taken each month, The conferences were conducted and addressed by the local pastors, 
assisted by the ministers of Westerly. Several speakers came from a distance, viz.: Professor Frederick L.° 
Anderson, D.D., of Newton Theological Institution, Professor Wm. H. Ryder, D.D., of Andover Theological 
Seminary, Professor Charles F. Kent, Ph.D., of Brown University (now of Yale), Rev. L. L. Henson, D.D., 
and Rey. L. S. Woodworth, of Providence, 

Through the courtesy of the editors of the local papers, viz.: Hon. George H. Utter of the Westerly 
Daily Sun, Mr. Edward T. Spencer of the Hope Valley Advertiser, and Mr. John Larkin of the Hope Valley 
Free Press, a series of ‘‘ Talks on John’s Gospel’”’ had been published at frequent intervals, contributed to 
by well known ministers of Rhode Island and other states. It had been hoped that this valuable series might 
be included in the present volume, but the limits of space did not permit. A few of these articles, however, 
of a nature supplementary to the Providence Addresses are printed in the Appendix (see pp. 444-480). 
Those contributing to this series were the following: Rev. Edward Abbott, D.D., Rev. James Church 
Alvord, Rey. Wm. C. Bitting, D.D., Rev. George A. Conibear, Rev. Samuel M. Dick, Ph.D., Rev. John 
G. Dutton, Rev. Edward O. Grisbrook, Professor Doremus A. Hayes, Ph.D., 5.T.D., LL.D., Rev. Dorr A. 


iv PREFACE. 


part. The people were very sorry when we completed John’s Gospel, and some of 
them would have been glad to go over the same course again. It has been a reve- 
lation of the deep things of God, and has stimulated our people to spread the truth 
more and more. John’s Gospel stands as the crowning Gospel, nearest the heart 
of Christ. We have commended the work to others. There has been a continuity 
about it which has been most profitable. It has been helpful in many ways. The 
spiritual life of the church has been deepened and the sense of responsibility to win 
others to the same knowledge of Christ has been increased. I want to commend 
this asa system. We are now to take up John’s Epistles in the same way”.* 

It has of course been a common practice for pastors to take up some one book 
of the Bible consecutively in the mid-week meeting. Professor F. L. Anderson of 
Newton had a most interesting experience with St. John’s Gospel when pastor of 
the Second Baptist Church of Rochester, N. Y. One chapter was taken each week. 
The attendance was large, sometimes reaching 200. Each person attending was 
requested to read the chapter at least once during the week and, if possible, once 
each day. At the meeting attention would be concentrated on one or two of the 
great themes of the chapter. Dr. Richards, of St. John’s Church, Providence, 
relates that some years ago Phillips Brooks told him that he began to lecture weekly 
on St. John’s Gospel the preceding fall, and that at the end of the winter was but 
half through. Dr. Richards laughed at his slow progress, tried the experiment 
himself, and at the end of the winter’s lecturing found he had only reached chapter 
seven! Probably the most effective method, the one that would hold the greatest 
/ interest of the greatest number, would be the more rapid one of a chapter a week, 
or at any rate the completing of the Gospel during the church year. This plan 
might be varied by taking, also, great themes of St. John occasionally at the 
Sabbath morning or evening service. 

The interest in the series of Saturday afternoon conferences mentioned above 
was such as to warrant the suggestion of a more thorough-going effort the following 


*Quoted from ‘‘ The Polished Arrow ”, organ of the Pawtucket Congregational Church, which was 
among the churches taking John’s Gospel the current year. 








Hudson, Rt. Rey. Frederick D, Huntington, S.T.D., D.C.L., LL.D., Rev. Reuben Kidner, Rey. Henry 
M. King, D.D., Rev. Alexander McKenzie, D.D., Rev. Wm. W. McLane, Ph.D., D.D., Rev. Rennetts C. 
Miller, Rev. James Lee Mitchell, Ph.D., Rev. Wm. J. Mutch, Ph.D,, Rev. Frederic Palmer, A.M., Rev. 
Arthur B. Patten, Rev. Edwin M. Poteat, D.D., Rev. C. A. L. Richards, D.D., Professor A. T. Robertson, 
D.D., Rev. E. Talmadge Root, Rev. George W. Shinn, D.D., Rey. Reuen Thomas, D.D., Rev. Willard 
Brown Thorp, Rev. Horace W. Tilden, D.D., Rev. James G. Vose, D.D., Rev. Wm. Hayes Ward, D.D., 
LL.D., Rev. Ernest G. Wellesley-Wesley, President Henry G. Weston, D.D., LL.D., Professor William C. 
Whitford, A.M., Professor Irving F. Wood, Ph.D., Rev. S. H. Woodrow, D.D. 

During the absence in Palestine of Professor James S. Riggs, D.D., of Auburn Theological Seminary, 
who had consented to prepare for the pastors outlines on the Gospel, valuable outlines were prepared by 
Professor Edward E. Nourse of Hartford Theological Seminary, Subsequently outlines were prepared by 
Professor Riggs (76 pages), which were found exceedingly useful and stimulating by the churches using 
them. Of these outlines Professor Beardslee has written these words: ‘‘ They are the work of a steady 
hand, In well-nigh every sentence a trained and tireless finger points straight at some problem or some 
treasure among the many with which this book abounds. I know of no guide at once so handy and so sure 
to shape the course of any honest and resolute explorer amidst the teeming wealth that here awaits and 
rewards all intent research”, Professor Hayes has also written as follows: ‘I am delighted with them. 
They must be invaluable to beginning students of the Gospel according to John: and mature students must 
find much in them that is stimulating and suggestive. I should think that one who would master all the 
outlines, answer all the questions, study all the topics for research, and read all the suggested literature might 
well begin to feel like an expert himself, in this field. They are the helps which only a master could fur- 
nish: and we may all feel grateful for the work he has done for us”. It is hoped that they may be published 
by the author. 

Papers were printed on individual chapters of the Gospel contributed by the following: Professor 
D, A, Hayes, S.T.D., of Garrett Biblical Institute (Chapter 2); Professor Charles C. Camp, of Seabury 


PREFACE. v 


year. At the final conference, held on May 16, 1903, the following resolution was 
adopted :— 

‘* WHEREAS, The Gospel of John occupies a central and commanding position 
among the New Testament writings, owing to its deep unfolding of the truths of 
Christ and to its intimate disclosure of the heart and mind of the Master, and 

‘* WHEREAS, These truths of Christ are the fundamental principles of Chris- 
tianity and the very life blood of the Christian Church, 

“* Therefore, be it Resolved, That we do recommend to the churches of the city 
and state special study of and work with this Gospel during the months of the 
coming year in such ways as may commend themselves to the individual pastors. 
We would suggest, as a central source of inspiration and suggestion, a series of 
conferences to be held at stated intervals during the year, at which teachers and 
preachers of the different denominations shall be asked to speak with the aim of 
bringing strongly home to the hearts and minds of both ministers and people these 
deep, vital truths so essential to the vigorous life and work of the church”. 

In accordance with this resolution a committee was appointed to have charge 
of the conferences consisting of the following pastors of Providence and Paw- 
tucket :— 

Rey. Carter E. Cate, D.D., Chairman, Rey. Arthur M. Aucock, Rev. Frank J. 











Divinity School (Chapter 4); Professor Edward I. Bosworth, D.D., of Oberlin Theological Seminary 
(Chapter 6); Professor F. L. Anderson, D.D., of Newton Theological Institution (Chapter 12). The deepest 
obligation was felt by the Washington County pastors to all who, in these various ways, so generously 
assisted them. 

The conferences were greatly enjoyed and the opportunity to listen to continuous expositions of large 
sections of the scripture was appreciated. The verdict of those attending them was, ‘* We are glad to have 
the ministers get behind the Gospel’’. 

The following is a schedule of the local conferences held on Chapters 13,14 and 15. Other places at 
which conferences were held during the season were Shannock and Hope Valley, R.I.; other pastors 
giving addresses were Rev. L. F. Randolph, Rev. John M. Paige, Rev. Warren Dawley, Rey. F. C. Baker, 
Rey. Wm. J. Sholar. 

















CHAPTER 13. CHAPTER 14. | CHAPTER I5. 
| 
Laurel Glen, Conn., ; ¥ 
Ln Wednesday, Reales | Rey. E, P. Mathewson. | Rey. F. D. Luddington. 
em Rey. H. A. Cornell 

2Friday, April 19*. C¥e ls A 
eras Lis, eee \| Rev. C. A. Burdick. Rey. W. D. Wilcox, 
Misod Hives) aay es oe } Rev. F. H. Decker. Prof. W.H. Ryder,D.D.| Rev. E. M. Wilson. 
ee 3 Sierilay Benilic6: } Rey. C, A. Burdick. Professor Ryder. Rey. John G. Dutton. 
eager ee eget i Rey. E, P. Mathewson, | Professor Ryder. Dea, Geo. H. Utter. 
Rockville eclay, April zo.} | RevsAlex. MeLearn. | Rev. C. A. Burdick. | Rev. E. I. Lindh. 
Pendleton Hill, Conn. 3 

TWelace Base “May a i Rey. E. P. Mathewson. | Rev. F. D. Luddington. | Rev. Alex. McLearn. 
Miner’ pMecpuattense, Conn: Reps Cab Bardick 
uesday ay 7. ae ‘ 
WeodvilteuR 1! ; 2 : : 
eS Rey. Daniel Davis. Dea. Edwin A. Lewis. 

Manic, Rebs | sday, May 9.}| Rev: O- U. Whitford. | Rey. Horace Stillman. | Dea. Edwin A. Lewis. 
Dunn’s Corners, R. I., - Rey. Horace Stillman. 

8Saturday, May rz. \| Rev. O. U. Whitford. {ReN OM Mille 
Perryville, s sill Magee: } Dea. Edwin A. Lewis. | Rev. E. M. Wilson. 








*Sermon, evening, Rev. Wm. L. Swan. f Also brief address by Rev. Alexander McLearn. 
1Afternoon. 2Afternoon and Evening. 3Morning and Afternoon (Seventh Day Baptist). +Evening, 
5Morning. 





vi PREFACE. 


Goodwin, Rev. John R. Brown, Rev. Archibald McCord, Rev. J. Francis Cooper, 
Rey. Henry M. King, D. D. 

Rev. T. H. Root (Alton, R. I.) was elected to act as Secretary. 

Other committees were constituted as follows: — 

Finance Committee—Hon. Rathbone Gardner, Chairman, Mr. A. B. McCrillis, 
Mr. C. E. Hancock, Mr. Albert C. Day, Rev. John M. Lowden, Mr. J. Wm. Rice, 
Mr. Geo. P. Peterson, Mr. H. E. Thurston, Mr. David Wilmot, Rey. A. E. Krom, 
Dr. F. B. Sprague, Mr. C. R. Thurston, Rev. Robert Cameron, D.D., Hon. D. 
Russell Brown, Rev. A. J Coultas, Mr. E. P. Metcalf, Mr. Wm. A. Walton, Hon. 
C. C. Mumford, Mr. John F. Greene, Mr. F. O. Bishop, Rev. Robert B. Parker, 
Mr. F. H. Fuller, Mr. Gideon G. Congdon, Mr. F. W. Marden, Dr. Albert L. Mor- 
rison, Mr. T. W. Waterman, Hon. N. W. Littlefield. 

Publication Committee—Rev. Edward C. Bass, D.D., Chairman, Rey. T. E. 
Bartlett, Rev. Levi B. Edwards, Rev. M.S. McCord, D.D., Rev. George A. Conibear, 
Rev. John J. Hall, Rev. H. C. Lowden, Rev. Wm. H. Durfee, Rev. T. F. Norris, 
Rev. Warren Dawley, Rev. Clayton A. Burdick, Mr. A. B. McCrillis, Hon. N. W. 
Littlefield, Mr. Herbert E. Drake, Hon. D. L. D. Granger, Mr. N. A. Westcott, 
Mr. Edward P. Metcalf, Mr. Albert C. Day. 

The programs of the eight Conferences held during the year 1903-4, giving 
dates, speakers, subjects,* etc., will be found in the Appendix (pp. 487-492). Of 
the fifty-four addresses deliv ered fifty-two are printed either in full or in part in 
this volume. Two of the addresses are absent as the speakers were unable to 
furnish manuscript. In arranging the Conferences it has been the purpose of the 
committee that they should represent the consensus of the thought of the Church. 
It has not been the purpose to introduce the controversial element. The committee 
do not, of course, assume responsibility for any of the opinions expressed. The 
value of the volume is much increased by the very complete analysis by Professor 
Anderson and by the Suggestive Studies and References by Professor Beardslee, 
both of which were prepared expressly for the Rhode Island pastors; also by 
several articles contributed to the series in the press (see note, p. iii, Preface). Itis 
believed that the Indices to Authors and to Texts will also add interest and useful- 
ness to the volume. 

The Rhode Island churches appreciate very deeply the great service rendered 
without remuneration by the Conference speakers. It was entirely on their part a 
labor of love for the Gospel, and of desire to assist the Rhode Island pastors in this 
work. The deep interest which followed the successive Conferences on the part of 
the large audiences that gathered from month to month was a sufficient attestation 
of the spiritual strength and scholarly power brought to the Conferences by men 
of many types of mind and of various ecclesiastical fellowships. The following 
words by the Providence correspondent of the ‘‘ Watchman” were written immed- 
iately after the first Conference :—‘t The speakers were men competent to instruct 
as well as to kindle ardor for truth. No series of meetings in this generation in 
Providence has so taken hold of the best minds in all churches. Teachers repre- 
senting the leading denominations come with their best thought to expound the 
profound teaching ot John”. At the close of the series the following statement 
was made by President Faunce of Brown University :—‘‘ One of the most valuable 
helps to the intellectual and religious life of the city of Providence during the past 


*It will be observed that many of the great themes of the Gospel and very many of the secondary 
themes have not been treated. Several of these were assigned either to professors or to ministers, but those 
to whom requests were sent, were unable to respond because of engagements already entered into. The 
volume by what it omits to do as well as by what it does will suggest the inexhaustible riches of this Gospel. 


PREFACE. vii 


year has been the series of really remarkable Conferences on the Gospel of John. 
Seldom have we had in our city so many speakers of eminence on religious themes, 
and never have we had more deeply interested audiences”. 

The Conferences were, to quote the words of Bishop Jaggar, a ‘‘ manifestation 
of the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace”. Through many voices it was 
the one church that spoke, and the consciousness of the one church was deepened 
in the minds of all who attended. The Conferences bore signal witness to the 
growing unity of Christians, and to the strength of united effort. 

One familiar with St. John’s Gospel will readily understand why it has been 
chosen for special presentation in this way. The Gospel of St. John is remarkable 
in its unity of structure, in its singleness of purpose in portraying Jesus.as the 
Christ, in the richness and profoundness of its teachings, and in its unique revela- 
tion of the personality and work of Christ. It is pervaded throughout by the 
deepest spirit of poetry and is characterized by the deepest philosophic insight. 
It speaks to the hearts and minds of all Christians, regardless of denomination or 
theological outlook. Both liberal and conservative are one in their love of this 
book. Testimony to its power, to the depth and clearness, the grandeur and 
simplicity of its revelation of the Master is found in every age and in every body 
of Christians. 

It is the most vital and vitalizing of the Gospels, preeminent in its urgent en- 
joining both of the ‘‘new commandment” as the organic law of the Christian 
Church and also of the militant purpose of winning mento Christ. In it are found 
not only the principles but also the methods for which the church in the present day 
is so earnestly seeking as the means of a more vital and fruitful work. It throbs 
intensely with the very heart of Christ. Meditation on and practice of its truths 
are the only means by which the heart of Christ may become the heart of the 
Church. 

It has been called the Theological Gospel because interpreting so deeply the 
Person and Teachings of Christ; the Evangelical Gospel because so intensely 
permeated with the purpose that men may believe;* it might also be called the 
Ethical Gospel so lofty is its standard of Christian obligation in its insistence on 
obedience to the commands of Christ and on the doing of the will of God. (It 
was well said by one of the Conference speakers that a book would yet be written 
on the Ethics of St. John’s Gospel). It has its peculiar grip on the heart and life 
because in it the disciple is brought into the very presence of the heart and mind of 
the Master. It presents the psychology of the Christian life because it reveals so 
much of the inmost consciousness of Christ, and because in it Christ makes clear 
so many of the inner relationships of truth and life in the soul of the disciple. Its 
keynotes are universal words. It appeals to those who seek the eternal truth and 
life and love. To the mind of today it presents Christianity in a peculiarly 
sympathetic way. 


*In response to the question, “‘ Do you think the purpose of the author was to win those not believing 
to belief in Christ, or to deepen the belief of believers ?” the following informal replies were received :— 

Professor Anthony:—“ I regard the Gospel as an afologetic, written both to confirm, and to pro- 
duce, belief”. 

Professor Beardslee:—* I should prefer not to try to distinguish, as your question suggests. I should 
rather say in general that its aim was to engender and establish faith”. 

Professor Hayes:—* Why may we not say that John wrote primarily for the church, to establish it in 
the faith: but with the whole world of readers in the background of his thought ?” 

. Professor Facobus:—* lf, as seems most likely, the First Epistle of John was written in connection 

with the Gospel of John, it would seem almost beyond question that the Gospel itself was written for 
those who were already Christians but who, under the influence of fulse teaching regarding Christ and the 


viii PREFACE. 


It was said by a German philosopher of the first half of the century just closed, 
that the Gospel of John was the Gospel of the church of the future; that the church 
of that time was not yet up to it. Whether or not this were true for that time and 
country, we do not believe it is true of the church in America today. No Gospel 
is so dear, and none appeals so strongly to Christian people as this Gospel.t The 
church finds itself—its purposes, its ideals, its aspirations, its duty, its work, its 
life, in this Gospel written by the beloved apostle. And in coming to this Gospel it 
also becomes deeply conscious of its own failures and shortcomings. 

In emphasizing the peculiar worth and function of the Fourth Gospel the value 
of the Synoptic Gospels must not be underestimated. It is only after a study of 
St. John that the range, the depth and the crystalline clearness of the Synoptic 
records can be fully appreciated. The Christ portrayed by St. John is the Christ 
who is revealed to us as bya lightning flash in Matthew 11 : 25-30and Luke 10:21, 22 

We can not refrain from quoting here the closing words of Professor Riggs in 
the Outlines mentioned above (see note, p. iv of Preface) :— 

‘*Our study of this noble Gospel has come to an end. To that study which 
makes experience, life the chief interpreter, there can never be anend. It calls us 


{The uniqueness of John’s Gospel consists, among other things, in its unique presentation of these three 
cardinal ideas of Christianity:— belief in Jesus as the Christ; obedience to the ‘‘new commandment” ; 
the relationship to God of being ‘‘ sent”. 


I. To show the emphasis placed on this ruling idea of the Fourth Gospel the passages bearing on this 
subject of belief in Jesus as the Christ are given herewith: 1:7—1:12—1:50—2: 11 —2:23—3: 15 — 
3 2 16 — 3:18 — 3: 36 — 4: 39 — 4: 4m — 4: 42 — 4253 — 5:38 — 5744 — 5: 46—5: 47 —6: 29 —6: 0 —6: 35 — 
6:36—6: 40—6:47—6:64—6:69—7:5—7:31 —7:38—7:39—7:48—8: 24—8 : 30 —8: 33 — 
8:45 — 8: 46—9 : 35 —9 : 36 — 9 : 38 — 10: 25 — 10:26 — 10:37 — 10: 38 — 10: 42 — IE: 15 — IF 2 25 — 
1x 226 — 11:27 — 11: 40 — 11242 — 15245 —- 15:48 — 12:15 — 12: 36 — 12 $ 37 — 12: 39 — 12: 42 — 
12: 44—12: 46 — 13 :19—14:1 — 14 110—14 : II —14 ! 12—14: 29 —16 :g —16 ; 27 —16 : 30— 16 : 31— 
17:8 — 17: 20 —17: 21 — 19: 35 —20 : 8 — 20: 25 — 20: 27 — 20: 29 — 20:31. The purpose of John’s Gospel 
to demonstrate that Jesus is the true and eternal life for every man represents the militant character of 
Christianity. Acceptance of the principles and standards of Christianity means acceptance of and devotion 
to the purpose and work of Christ ‘‘ that the world may believe”. The spirit of the church is one of con- 
quest. It is indeed a militant church. 


Il. The new life brought into the world by Christ (as revealed in the cross) must be embodied in a new 


law, and that law, stated with special reference to the relation of the disciples one to another, is the “‘ new 
commandment ’’. The law of self-sacrificing love even unto death which was the principle of His life, is to be 








Christian life, needed to have the teachings of Christ regarding Himself and His religion placed before 
them in new and impressive ways. 

“This would seem to be confirmed by the definite statement of the author of the Gospel at the close of 
the twentieth chapter, which speaks of the Gospel as presenting Jesus as the Christ through faith in whom, 
that is through a real and vital faith in whom alone, a full and vital Christian life is possible”. 

Professor Nash:— 1 do not believe that the author of the Fourth Gospel consciously separated the 
two things. But the end and aim is the demonstration to the world that Jesus is the Christ of God. The 
other motive, however, was a part of the whole”’. 

Professor Sitterly:— Like John’s Epistles and Apocalypses I am of opinion that his Gospel was 
written to strengthen ‘the belief of believers’’’. 

Professor Stevens:—*1 should say the Fourth Gospel was written for Christian Churches and 
believers, as were the other three, and in order to produce and develop faith in Jesus Christ. It assumes, as 
already existing, some knowledge of the Gospel facts, and an already existing germ of Christian faith on 
the part of its readers’”’, 

Professor White:—“1 do not know what is the basis for the opinion held by some that the Gospel 
was written for believers chiefly. It certainly does greatly strengthen believers, but I do think it was 
written primarily for outsiders. Surely the statement of 20: 30, 31 looks strongly towards this”. 

Professor Whitford :—‘1 think that John’s purpese was to produce faith in Jesus. Of course such 
a book as his can not fail to strengthen the faith of those who already believe”. 

See also pages 99-106 and other passages throughout the book. 


PREFACE. ix 


to go on to know the Lord through all the profound realities of communion and 
obedience which involve the ultimate depths of life. The deeper we go by this 
way of interpretation the surer shall we be that this is no fabricated portrait of the 
Master. It is rather the picture of one who saw not merely the scenery of Galilee 
and Judea, nor simply the external forms of that memorable group now known as 
Master and Disciples, but whose profoundly religious spirit, touched, illumined, 
guided by the Spirit of Truth, grasped the eternal significance of Him to whom 
His life had been given. Is there a subjective elementin John? Of course there is, 
but it is the subjectivism of one whose insight was directed to the inner, eternal 
meanings of Jesus. Rightly has it been said that John saw Jesus and His truth 
sub specte Eternitatis. Does that make the Gospel less true? Evidence enough 


the principle of their life. Thus the actual life of Christ is to become the actual life of the church. He calls 
the disciples unto Him that they may possess this life and in turn be workers with Him in bringing this life to 
others. 

Through the ‘‘new commandment” the power of the cross becomes the power of the church 
organizing (see p. 276) its heterogeneous and oftentimes apparently irreconcilable elements into a deep and 
living unity. This is the great miracle which when accomplished proves to the world the genuineness of 
Christian discipleship (13: 35) and also the divineness of Christ’s mission (17:21). Failure to observe the 
“new commandment” has been the cause of the downfall of many achurch. The militant purpose toward 
those without and the new commandment working within give to the church an esprit de corps which 
makes it invincible. 


In Chapters 1-12 the great word is de/zef; in Chapters 13-21 the great word is Jove, occasionally 
interwoven with the word de/zef. Belief in Christ leads to love for, obedience to, union with Christ. Belzef 
is the gateway to the eternal life of self-sacrificing Jove. For passages bearing on the ‘‘new command- 
ment” and on the unity that results from obedience to it, see 13 : 34 —13 : 35—15 :12—15 :13—15 :17— 
13 214-16 —17 : 11 —17: 21 —17: 22—17: 23 (see also 13:1 —15 : g—17 : 26). 

III. The many different connections in which Jesus speaks of ‘‘ him that sentme” show how centra 
and fundamental was Jesus’ consciousness of being “‘sent”. The iteration and reiteration of this is most 
striking. It is an ever recurring refrain (as in ‘‘the will of him that sent me”, 4:34; 5:30; 6: 38; cf. 
Matt. 6 : 10; 7: 21; 12:50; 26:39, 42, etc). Christ would have this consciousness become the consciousness 
of the church. When we notice that the phrase “‘ sent” in connection with Christ is used 40 times before it is 
used in the final passage, we realize the tremendous impressiveness of the words of Jesus, “‘ As my Father hath 
sent me, even so send I you” (20: 21; see also 17:18). Relationship with Christ in learning becomes relation- 
ship with Christ in being ‘‘sent”. Note Professor Nash’s definition of the living church as composed of those 
who have learned how to pray and therefore have learned how to work (p. 157). For passages see 3 : 17 — 
3234 — 4:34-5:23 —5:24—5:30—5 :36—5 :37—5 : 38—6 : 29 — 6: 38 —6 : 39 —6: 44 —6 : 57 — 
7:16—7:18—7:28—7:29 —7:33—8:16—S8:18 —8 : 26—8: 29 — 8: 42 —9:4—10: 36—11: 42— 
I2 3 44—12:45 — 12:49 — 13: 20—14:24 —15:21 —16:5 — 17:3 —17:8— 17:18 — 17:21 — 17:23 — 
17:25—20:21. Cf. Matt. 10:40; Mk. 9:37; Lk. 9: 48; 10:16. Christ’s relation to the world is comple_ 
mentary to His relation to God. The force with which He is sent #o the world is the same as that with which 
Hes sent /yom the Father. In the Synoptic Gospels the emphasis is on the former; in the Fourth Gospel 
on the latter. See Lk. 5:32; 19:10; Matt.20: 28; 15:24; Lk. 4: 43. 

As is seen by reading the references under the above headings John’s Gospel holds up to usina 
peculiariy vivid and definite way Jesus’ consciousness of being “sent ”’ to do the will of God; Jesus’ purpose 
that the world may believe; Jesus’ teaching of the new commandment of self-sacrificing love. These three 
ideas are the elemental principles of Christianity. They represent a purpose, life, consciousness of Christ, 
which in turn are to become the purpose, life, consciousness of the church, that the life of God which was in 
Christ, the eternal life of self-sacrificing love as manifested in the cross, may be in them: ‘“‘ I in them, and 
thou in me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and 
lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me’’, The militant purpose of the church is that men may believe, its 
life is the life of self-sacrificing love, its consciousness is that of being “sent ” by Christ. A church with such 
a life and with such a purpose and with such a propulsive force from Christ its Lord has within itself unlimited 
reserves of power. 

These three principles represent the movement of the Christian life:—drawn to Christ in belief, united 
with one another in love, sent out into the world in service. The most conspicuous New Testament example 
of marvellous realization of this three-fold relationship 1s the Apostle Paul: 

It will be noticed that these three cardinal ideas are very closely involved in the purpose of the Gospel 
as stated in 20:31. Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, is sent into the world that men may believe, and that 
believing they may enter into the eternal life of self-sacrificing love. 

This is He whom the church knows as King of Truth, and Life of the human race. 


x PREFACE. 


there is of its historicity. No other Gospel is more faithful to historical situations ; 
no other Gospel is more keenly alive to psychological presentations. Its portrai- 
ture of Jesus, different as is its setting from that of the Synoptics, is thoroughly 
consistent with theirs. What they exhibit constantly in action and now and then 
by word is here completely interpreted in that blaze of glory which casts a noon-day 
clearness upon the person and character of the Messiah”. 

During the progress of the Conferences subscriptions for a proposed volume 
were taken and at the close of the series enough had been received to ensure the 
printing of the addresses given. The committee are especially grateful to these 
earliest subscribers without whose prompt support the volume would have been 
impossible. One of the inspirations in the work of the Conferences has been the 
fact that through the volume a medium will be furnished by which the best which 
a large city like Providence can command will be made available for the pastor and 
teacher in the remotest hamlet of the state. In serving the Providence churches 
the speakers have been serving the churches of the entire state. The interest 
“which has been manifested by many outside Rhode Island has also been most 
gratifying. Subscriptions for from one to one hundred copies have been received 
from churches, seminaries and individuals beyond the borders of the state. The 
committee are most grateful to the speakers for their constant encouragement 
and cooperation. They can best show their appreciation of this cordidl ‘support 
from the first and of the great merit of the addresses, by endeavoring to give to 
the volume as wide a circulation as possible. Should the sale of the book be 
sufficient to give a surplus, this will be devoted to interdenominational purposes. 

The special thanks of the committee are due to Hon. Nathan W. Littlefield for 
his generous services as Treasurer of the Conferences and for much labor spent in 
connection with the Business Men’s Lunch of January 13; to Rey. Albert F. 
Bassford, a student in Brown University, for careful stenographic reports of many of 
the addresses; also to Mr. A. B. McCrillis and to Mr. Albert C. Day for important 
aid rendered in receiving subscriptions from outside Rhode Island. Mr. Day has 
also kindly consented to act as Treasurer of the Publication Committee. The 
committee take pleasure also in acknowledging the uniform courtesy of the daily 
press —the Journal and Bulletin, the News, and the Telegram —in reporting the 
Conferences. ; 

Particularly is the committee under obligation to Rev. Thomas E. Bartlett, 
pastor of the Pawtuxet Baptist Church, who has corrected the proof and super- 
vised the book through the press, and for whose indefatigable labor and constant 
vigilance every reader will be grateful. 

The Committee wish to thank most heartily all those who whether in the Con- 
ferences or by private subscription contributed to the necessary expenses of the 
Conferences; also all those who in many other ways have aided in connection 
with the Conferences or in connection with the resulting volume. For all the 
Committees as well as for very many individuals, whose names are not mentioned 
in the volume but who have done much to assist, the entire work connected with 
both Conferences and volume has been a labor of love. 


CONTENTS. 


PREFACE : : ‘ : E : : : . Y : iii 
MEN AND EVENTS IN THE TIME OF JEsus— 

Professor Charles F. Sitterly, Ph.D.,S.T.D. 5 ; ; ‘ F I 
THE STUDY OF THE GOSPEL BY JOHN— 

President Wilbert W. White, Ph.D. ; : : ; 2 . 10 
THE FirsT CHAPTER— 

President Wilbert W. White, Ph.D. : . : : : ' 22 
THE PROLOGUE— (1:1-18) — 

Professor Clark S. Beardslee, D.D. : : : : ; : 26 
JOHN THE BAPTIST AND His GOSPEL — (1: 19-37) — 

Professor Wm. Arnold Stevens, D.D.,LL.D. . : j : : 30 
THE CALL OF THE FIRST DISCIPLES — (x1 : 29-51) — 

Rev. A. C. Dixon, D.D. : 5 : 5 3 : ; : 42 
“Sons oF GoD” — (1:12) — 

Rev. Floyd W. Tomkins, S.T.D. . : : : . ; F 50 
“FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH” — (1:14) — 

Professor Henry S.Nash,D.D. . : F : 5 : : 59 
THE MIRACLE AT CANA(WITH AN ATTEMPT AT A PHILOSOPHY OF MIRACLES) — 

(2: 1-11) — 

President Augustus H. Strong, D.D.,LL.D. . : : } : 63 
JESUS AND NICODEMUS—THE NEw BIRTH — (3:1-15) — 

Rev. Edward Abbott, D.D. . ‘ i ‘ : : 5 . 7X 
ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH BELIEF —(3:14-21)— 

Rev. Albert H. Plumb, D.D. 4 . : ; , , ; 76 
THE OPTIMISM OF JESUS — (4:1-42) — 

Rev. Frank J. Goodwin : 5 ‘ ; ; : ; F 87 
THE SOURCE OF JESUS’ STRENGTH — (4:34) — 

Rev. Willis P. Odell, D.D. ‘ f : : 5 : 93 
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF THE CHURCHES— 

Rev. Henry M. King, D.D. . : 4 : : 5 2 : 99 
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN — 

Rev. Alexander McKenzie, D.D. . : : : : : 5 107 
THE WorRKS OF JESUS. I. RESURRECTION — (5 :17-30) — 

Rev. George P. Eckman, Ph.D., D.D. : , : : : : 118 


THE Works oF Jesus. II. JUDGMENT — (5: 17-30) — 
Rev. Charles M. Melden, Ph.D., D.D. 5 3 3 : 2 : 124 


xii CONTENTS. 


THE SECRET OF JESUS’ LIFE— (5: 30)— 
Rev. John Balcom Shaw, D.D. 

FAITH IN CHRIST THE SPRING OF RELIGIOUS ACTION — (6:29) — 
President Nathan E. Wood, D.D. 


JESUS THE BREAD OF LIFE— (6: 30-59) — 
Rev. Cornelius Woelfkin, D.D. 


THE CONFESSION OF PETER—CHRIST THE WORLD’s ONLY HoPE AND LIFE— 
(6:68, 69) — 
Professor Henry S. Nash, D.D. 

Jesus’ CONTROVERSIES WITH THE JEWS— 
Professor Melancthon W. Jacobus, D.D. 


UNBELIEF THE FUNDAMENTAL SIN — 
Rev. B. L. Whitman, D.D., LL.D. 


KNOWLEDGE OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS THROUGH THE DOING OF THE 
WILL oF Gop—(7:17)— 
Rey. Francis J. McConnell, Ph.D. 


SPIRIT AND LIFE — (7 :37-39)— 
Rev. Amory H. Bradford, D.D. 


THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS—(8:29, 46) — 
Rev. William R. Huntington, D.D., D.C.L., L.H.D. 


THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES— 
Professor Charles W. Rishell, Ph.D. 


FREEDOM THROUGH THE TRUTH—(8:31-36)— 
Rev. Everett D. Burr, D.D. 


THE HoME AT BETHANY AND THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS — (11: 1-46; 12: 1-11) — 
Rev. Donald Sage Mackay, D.D. 


THE CROSS THE WORLD’S EVANGEL, OR THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF SACRIFICE 
IN RELATION TO MISSIONS —(12:20-32)— 
Rey. Henry C. Mabie, D.D. 


THE ATTRACTING POWER OF THE CROSS—(12:32)— 
Rev. Avery A. Shaw, M.A. : 3 ; 
THE COMMANDMENT OF GOD AND LIFE EVERLASTING —(r12: 49, 50)— 
Rev. Stewart Means, D.D. : : ¢ : 3 F 
THE WASHING OF THE DISCIPLES’ FEET AND THE LAW OF SERVICE— (13: 1-17)— 
Rev. Edwin Alonzo Blake, Ph.D., D.D. 
THE GLORIFICATION OF THE SON OF MAN—(13:31, 32) — 
Professor Samuel Hart, D.D., D.C.L. 5 , 
OBEDIENCE TO THE NEW COMMANDMENT THE PROOF OF DISCIPLESHIP — 
(13:34) 35)— 
Rev. Rockwell H. Potter 3 é ; ; - : 
MYSTICISM IN THE 14th, 15th AND 16th CHAPTERS OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL — 
Professor Alfred Williams Anthony, D.D. 
JESUS THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER—(14:6-11)— 
Professor Henry C. Sheldon, S.T.D. 


PAGE 


130 


136 


145 


153 


161 


177 


187 


197 


205 


218 


224 


280 


287 


CONTENTS. 


THE PRESENCE OF THE FATHER, SON AND SPIRIT THROUGH OBEDIENCE TO 
THE COMMANDS OF CHRIST —(14:21-26)— 
Rev. Robert A. Ashworth, A.M. 
FRIENDSHIP WITH JESUS THROUGH OBEDIENCE TO His COMMANDS— 
(15 314, 15)— 
Rev. John D. Pickles, Ph.D. : 
“THAT THEY ALL May BE ONE” —(Chapter 17)— 
Professor Henry T. Fowler, Ph.D. 
THE UNITY OF CHRISTIANITY AS REVEALED IN THE PRAYER OF CHRIST— 
(Chapter 17) — 
Professor Henry S. Nash, D.D. 
SANCTIFICATION IN THE TRUTH —(17: 17-19)— 
Rev. D. W. Faunce, D.D. 
THE SELF-SURRENDER OF JESUS CHRIST —(18:11)— 
Rev. George M. Stone, D.D. 
THE CRUCIFIXION —“IT IS FINISHED ” — (19:30) — 
Rt. Rev. Thomas A. Jaggar, D.D. : : 
THE RESURRECTION THE CROWNING FACT OF CHRISTIANITY — (Chapter 20) — 
President Herbert Welch, D.D. 
THE TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER— 
President Henry G. Weston, D.D., LL.D. 
THE IMporRT OF ST. JOHN 21: 15-17 — 
Rev. Galusha Anderson, S.T.D., LL.D. 
THE TEACHING FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH — 
Professor Frank K. Sanders, Ph.D., D.D. 
THE METHOD OF JESUS WITH INDIVIDUALS — (3: 1-16; 4: 5-26) — 
President William Douglas Mackenzie, D.D. 
THE PERSONAL EQUATION OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL — 
Rev. Frederic Palmer, A.M. 
THE AUTHOR OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL — 
Professor Clark S. Beardslee, D.D. 


APPENDIX. 


REMARKS OF GOVERNOR GARVIN, MAYOR MILLER AND OTHERS AT THE 
Business MEn’s LUNCH OF JANUARY 13, 1904 j : 
ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL, EMBODYING ALSO CONFERENCE ADDRESS ON “ How 
THE GOSPEL WAS MADE” — 
Professor Frederick L. Anderson, D.D. 
SUGGESTIVE STUDIES AND REFERENCES — 
Professor Clark S. Beardslee, D.D. 


xiti 


PAGE 


295 


317 


326 


332 


344 


356 


366 


380 


382 


39° 


397 


405 


414 


437 





xiv CONTENTS. 


THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN — 
President Henry G. Weston, D.D., LL.D. 
THE Most REMARKABLE GOSPEL— 
Professor Doremus A. Hayes, Ph.D., S.T.D., LL.D. 
“IN THE BEGINNING” —(r1:1)— 
Rev. James Lee Mitchell, Ph.D. 
A LEsson IN METHODS— 
President Edwin M. Poteat, D.D. 3 - - 
THE CONDITION OF ENTRANCE INTO THE KINGDOM OF Gane 1-16) — 
Professor William C. Whitford, A.M. 
THE GOSPEL OF THE CONVERSATIONS — 
Rev. James G. Vose, D.D. : 5 5 
THE PRINCIPLE OF MISSIONS IN THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN— 
Rev. W. C. Bitting, D.D. F 
SANCTIFICATION THROUGH THE TRUTH — (17: 17)— 
Rev. Horace W. Tilden, D.D. : é 
THE DRAMATIC MOVEMENT IN ST. JOHN’S GOSPEL— 
Rev. Willard Brown Thorp c : 
St. JoHN’s TEACHING OF FATHERHOOD AND SONSHIP— 
Rt. Rev. Frederic Dan Huntington, S.T.D., D.C.L., LL.D. 
A HIDDEN REVELATION — (21:15-17) — 
Rey. James Church Alvord 
THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH— 
Rev. C. A. L. Richards, D.D. 
St. JOHN IN ALL AGES 


PROGRAMS AND INDICES. 


PROGRAMS OF THE CONFERENCES 
INDEX TO AUTHORS 
INDEX TO TEXTS 


PAGE 


487 
493 
502 


an 


BuT AS MANY AS RECEIVED HIM, TO THEM GAVE HE POWER 
TO BECOME THE SONS OF GOD, EVEN TO THEM THAT BELIEVE ON 
HIs NAME. 


AND THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, AND DWELT AMONG US, 
(AND WE BEHELD HIs GLORY, THE GLORY AS OF THE ONLY BEGOTTEN 
OF THE FATHER,) FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH, 


For AS THE FATHER HATH LIFE IN HIMSELF; SO HATH HE 
GIVEN TO THE SON TO HAVE LIFE IN HIMSELF. 


Anp I, 1r I BE LIFTED UP FROM THE EARTH, WILL DRAW 
ALL MEN UNTO Meg, 


I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD: HE THAT FOLLOWETH ME 
SHALL NOT WALK IN DARKNESS, BUT SHALL HAVE THE LIGHT 
OF LIFE. 


A NEW COMMANDMENT I GIVE UNTO YOU, THAT VE LOVE ONE 
ANOTHER; AS I HAVE LOVED YOU, THAT YE ALSO LOVE ONE ANOTHER. 
By THIS SHALL ALL MEN KNOW THAT YE ARE My DISCIPLES, IF 
YE HAVE LOVE ONE TO ANOTHER. 


Ir A MAN LOVE ME, HE WILL KEEP My worbDs: AND My 
FATHER WILL LOVE HIM, AND WE WILL COME UNTO HIM, AND 
MAKE OUR ABODE WITH HIM. 


I IN THEM, AND THOU IN Mk, THAT THEY MAY BE MADE 
PERFECT IN ONE; AND THAT THE WORLD MAY KNOW THAT THOU 
HAST SENT M&, AND HAST LOVED THEM, AS THOU HAST LOVED Mk, 


As My FaTHER HATH SENT ME, EVEN SO SEND I you. 


ae 


‘* But patient stated much of the Lord’s life 
Forgotten or misdelivered, and let it work: 
Since much that at the first, in deed and word, 
Lay simply and sufficiently exposed, 
Had grown (or else my soul was grown to match, 
Fed through such years, familiar with such light, 
Guarded and guided still to see and speak) 
Of new significance and fresh result ; 
What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars, 
And named them in the Gospel I have writ.” 


— Browning: ‘‘ A Death in the Desert.” 


*MEN AND EVENTS IN THE TIME OF JESUS. 
f BY REV. CHARLES F. SIPTTERLY, PH. D., S. T. D., 


PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE AND EXEGESIS OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE, DREW 
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, MADISON, N. J. 


Whether history ever repeats itself is open to debate, but there can be 
no question that the historical situation into which Jesus was born was 
wholly unique. Like conditions had certainly never before been realized 
since the world began, and it is just as clear that their duplicate can never 
be approximated in the ages to come. 

The signs of Jesus’ times were peculiarly obscure to the men of His 
generation, but they have ever since been growing more significant and 
luminous until today even the rapid runner and the traveling man may 
rightly read them. To be sure, His horoscope had been cast at the begin- 
ning with a definiteness of detail both as to time, place, and singular cir- 
cumstances, but even those who searched the Sacred Writings most dili- 
gently missed utterly the meaning of their testimony unto Him, and it fell 
in His day, and so far forth until the present, that strangers took Him in 
and proclaimed and finally crowned Him, while they who were His own not 
only wilfully misread His credentials in all their Scriptures from Moses 
until John, but entering into partnership with the proud princes of this 
world, they finally condemned and crucified their own rightful King. - 

There are three standpoints from which one may view any great his- 
torical character with profit, and these contemplate Him in His relation to 
the social, the political, and the religious tendencies of His times. Of 
course, these relations commingle, and they may not be arbitrarily meas- 
ured as separate one from the other, but they are capable of practical dis- 
tinction and are certainly helpful to orderly discussion. 

When Jesus, after thirty years of preparation, entered upon His Messi- 
anic mission, He was challenged by Satan from these three standpoints. 


(1) ‘‘If Thou art indeed Son of God, command these stones to become 
loaves of bread—abolish hunger—make poverty impossible—command men 
to divide their inheritance—make labor lighter or do away with it alto- 
gether. Command the earth to bring forth loaves of bread already baked ; 
give us manna for the mere gathering, as Moses did”. 

(2) ‘If Thou art Son of God, seize the reins of royalty—become the 
universal king. Thou seest the separate parts of that empire and the glory 
of them—they are all mine, and by adopting my methods they can all become 
yours”’. 

(3) ‘‘If Thou art Son of God, appeal boldly to the superstitious’ ele- 
ment in mankind—cast Thyself down from the temple-top and let angels 
bear Thee visibly up—make display of Thy powers—conjure up and play 
upon the innate love of man for the spectacular and unreal—the world is 


* Delivered at the First Conference, held at the First Baptist Church, October 21, 1903. 


Z THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


always ready for such leadership—worship me and I will bring you the 
homage of millions of men”’. 

Thus was Jesus of Nazareth tested in His three-fold nature, and by a 
careful contemplation of the three fields from which His temptation sprang 
may we obtain some added appreciation of His unique personality and 
mission. 

I. First, then, we will consider the social conditions of the world into 
which Jesus was born, and I use the word “social” in the work-a-day or 
domestic sense, inclusive of physical and temporal environment. In the 
province of Galilee, where most happily Jesus was brought up, there existed 
in miniature all the diverse conditions and combinations of human society. 
Galilee was the garden of the Holy Land, and its native or Jewish popula- 
tion was very largely engaged in agricultural pursuits. To engage in man- 
ual labor was no disgrace to the Hebrew, the disgrace rested rather upon 
him who would not work. Oil, wine, wheat, fruits, and fish were produced 
in great quantities. Abundance of flax was raised, and the linen fabrics 
made by the women of Galilee were of unusual fineness and beauty. A 
peculiar kind of pottery, made from the black clay found in the region of 
Cana, was highly esteemed throughout Syria. Magdala boasted of over 
300 shops where pigeons for the sacrifices were sold, Safed was celebrated 
for its honey, Shikmonah for its pomegranates, Akabar for the raising of 
pheasants, and Sepphoris, the hitherto capital of the province, was noted 
for the production of grain and fruit, Arbela was celebrated for its manufac- 
ture of cloth,.Tarichaea, on Lake Galilee, was known throughout the east 
for its extensive fish factories, and from this same port on the lake, Josephus 
in his day collected a fleet of 230 ships to lead in the attack upon Tiberias. 
It is evident from the mounds of ruins which today line the shores of that 
little lake that hundreds of thousands of souls teemed about it at the open- 
ing of the Christian era, and it is entirely probable that between two and 
three million people found residence in the 200 cities of this prosperous 
province of Galilee. The majority of these towns were distinctively Jewish, 
made up of families whose heads were by right as proud of their pure 
lineage as any household of Judea, but there was far less of narrowness and 
racial exclusiveness than in the more southern shire. Business interests 
were broader and more truly cosmopolitan, and then, as now, the measure 
of prosperity was more evenly shared and the commoner blessings of life 
were more generally distributed than in the vicinity of the Jewish capital. 
The very fact of their comparative isolation, on account of their distance 
from the sacred center, together with that of their proximity to distinctly 
Gentile communities, tended to deepen and intensify racial pride and 
patriotism while, at the same time, it broadened the provincials in a most 
wholesome way. The malicious fling at Jesus as one “from Nazareth,” and 
as ‘a Galilean,” did not reflect either as wide-spread or as deep-seated a 
contempt as is too often supposed, and it will be recalled that many of the 
best disciplined and the most efficient forces which supported the national 
cause, both with blood and with treasure, from the time of the Maccabees 
to those of Bar Chochba, were drawn from Galilee. But it was appropri- 


— 


MEN AND EVENTS IN THE TIME OF JESUS. 3 


ately called “‘ Galilee of the Gentiles,” and the non-Jewish element must be 
clearly recognized. The most marked foreign factor is properly called 
Greek, although the government was actually Roman. But from the days 
of Alexander the Great and his Seleucid successors, Greek fashions, Greek 
ideas, and the Greek language had taken deep hold upon the northern 
province of Palestine. From Ptolemais, on the seacoast, to the group of 
ten Greek cities called Decapolis, in the upper Jordan valley, there was a 
chain of Greek communities right across Galilee, which inevitably and 
indelibly influenced her people, and when we remember that all of the New 
Testament writings, as they have come down to us, have been in Greek, 
and more than half of its writers were natives of this province, we realize 
how mighty that influence must have been. Weare able, also, to see why 
the people of Galilee lacked the narrow prejudices so common to those of 
Judea, and to understand how the foreign elements among them tended to 
develop and enlarge their minds and characters. This is doubtless one of 
the chief reasons why Christ and His cosmopolitan system of ethics and 
morals received so favorable a hearing in Galilee, and why so large a pro- 
portion of His disciples came from that province. It will be remembered 
that 11 of the apostolic 12 were Galileans, one only being chosen from 
Judea, “‘and he was a devil.’”’ We find, then, that what we have called the 
social atmosphere in which Jesus Himself was developed, and in turn devel- 
oped His heaven-born Gospel, was peculiarly healthy as an environment for 
the reception of that Gospel both from the purity of its native elements and 
from the world affinities and outgoings of its foreign ingredients. 

IJ. Let us now ascend an exceeding high mountain, and behold all 
the kingdoms of the world in the first century, and the glory of them, and 
see what attitude our Saviour takes toward the political situation about Him. 
Born during the Augustan age at the very climax of Rome’s imperial pros- 
perity, with the ears of all men still ringing with the renown of the Czsars, 
and their mouths full of the tales of conspiracies and plots, the passions 
and the exploits of a Pompey, a Brutus, a Cassius, an Antony and a Cleo- 
patra, all of whom had marched and countermarched across the Galilean 
plains, with the national tales of Maccabean bravery and valor and of 
Herodian duplicity and diabolism, smarting under the repeated levies of 
talents and of troops to keep up the pagan pageant, what real patriot could 
fail to feel the rising within him of a spirit of unquenchable hatred for 
everything foreign, and a desire for revenge, and that only equal to the 
depths of shame and of outrage which his land and his people had endured 
for generations? And Jesus was a most intense patriot, who yearned after 
the betterment of His own people and nation with a fervent passion which 
at times seemed almost to consume Him. To Him, Palestine was already 
the Holy Land, and He loved its hills and vales and water courses and 
mountains, its solitudes and torests, and its teeming cities and overflowing 
capital with an affection which no one else except, perhaps, David had ever 
approximated. He admired the splendid new temple even then in process 
of building, and coveted it as ‘‘ for all nations the house of prayer”, and He 
enjoyed the architectural renaissance, which was filling with great structures 


rae =" 
te, 


4 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


every corner of the land, but He could not fail to read in these things the 
extension of Beelzebub’s kingdom, and He was not deceived. Although 
Jesus was born in the reign and dominion of Herod the Great, He passed 
His life as a civil subject of Herod Antipas, whose tetrarchate of Galilee 
covered the entire period of Christ’s career. Antipas inherited the political 
cunning of the greater Herod and ruled his province with marked success, 
trimming adroitly between the prejudices and customs of his Jewish and 
Greek subjects, never failing in his loyalty to Tiberius Casar, in whose 
honor he built and named the new capital on the lake, and yet never pro- 
voking to the brink of rebellion the liberty-loving spirit of the Galileans. 
Christ correctly measured and labeled him ‘that fox”. The province of 
Judea was so much harder to control that, after the death of the first 
Herod, who for over 4o years ruled it as with a rod of iron and not improp- 


erly thereby won the title of ‘‘Great’’, it was taken under the immediate. 


oversight of Roman procurators, of whom Pontius Pilate was the sixth 
successive appointee within 20 years. But Herod the Great had utterly 
demoralized and incapacitated the capital province for loyalty either to the 
traditions of the fathers or to the political policies of its later masters. 
No more consummate master in the art of corrupt diplomacy probably ever 
lived, or more supple acrobat in the arena of spectacular public service than 
the first Herod, but he was not altogether bad nor was his reign altogether 
without effect in preparing the hearts of the Hebrews more willingly to 
receive a spiritual kingdom and king. His glory as a builder of great pub- 
lic works was scarcely second to that of Solomon, and in Palestine even 
today one may trace his handiwork from end to end of the land. In Jeru- 
salem he began by rebuilding the citadel of the temple, which he renamed 
Antonia in honor of Antony. He then built a group of impregnable towers 
on the north front of Zion. Next came a stadium, a theatre, and an 
amphitheatre, which last occasioned a conspiracy well-nigh costing him his 
life. Turning now from the capital, he began to fortify and garrison various 
parts of the country, in readiness for revolt. He built two strong castles, 
known respectively as the Herodium in Judea and the Herodium in Arabia, 
and rebuilt four well-situated Asmonean strongholds, which had fallen into 
ruin. Samaria, Casarea, Gaba and Heshbon he fortified and lavishly 
equipped as military posts. Inthe case of Casarea, he spent 12 years in 
developing a splendid seaport, erecting quays, moles, towers, sewers, col- 
onnades, palaces, and temples, as well as an amphitheatre, a theatre, and a 
hippodrome. This soon became the Roman center of the realm. Here, as 
well as at Jerusalem, games were instituted in honor of the emperor every 
four years. These comprised gymnastic and musical games, chariot races, 
and contests with wild beasts, and it is not at all probable that the mass 
of the population, which was, of course, Jewish, kept themselves from 
attending them. Thus the generation to which Jesus belonged was deeply 
tainted with tastes and tendencies from which only a reformer ‘“ whose fan 
was in his hand”, and whose scourge of stinging thongs could exorcise or 
purge them. 


ee ee 


MEN AND EVENTS IN THE TIME OF JESUS. 5 


But the process of political servitude, so cleverly concealed and so ably 
carried out by Herod and his successors, had taken such vital hold upon 
the nation that when at last the Messiah was heralded by his forerunner and 
proclaimed from Heaven, and accredited by many mighty works and words 
of his own, neither leaders nor multitudes were able to break the hypnotic 
spell that rested upon them while they cried ‘‘ Away with Him, away with 
Him, crucify Him, crucify Him, we have no King but Casar”’. 

III. This brings us face to face with the religious situation which 
involves a problem whose complexity well nigh defies satisfactory solution. 
It is well known that the spiritual life of the pagan world had dwindled 
to the vanishing point. Among the Hebrews a few families, scattered more 
often in rural villages and communities of the Diaspora, kept the pure light 
of intelligent faith and pious living glowing in the hearts of a saving remnant, 
but the nation as a whole was hopelessly divided into contentious factions 
incapable of responding to common appeals or leadership except along the 
lines of the basest passions and prejudices. The two poles we may say, 
around which these extremes of religious energy centured were Jzetism and 
scribism. As has been well said “the fact that a village became a town 
when once it possessed ten men who agreed to be regular attendants upon 
the synagogue and the additional fact that later it became customary to pay 
these men for attending service, certainly does not heighten one’s confidence 
in popular piety”. Nevertheless the clear glimpses which the gospels give 
of unfeigned faith and genuine spirituality in a few sporadic cases is evidence 
that the synagogue was not the only school or source of religious activity. 
The prophetess Anna was not alone in her sympathy with Mary’s glad con- 
fidence in the Messianic future of her first-born son for ‘‘she spake of Him 
unto a// them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem’. Nor was Simeon 
the only saint awaiting in expectant joy the consolation of Israel, nor was 
Zacharias the only priest, nor Nicodemus the only rabbi, nor Nathaniel the 
only Israelite who were righteous and sincere and guileless inquirers into 
the deepest meaning of Christ’s visitation. Moreover, the fact is too often 
entirely overlooked that Jesus, as well as The Baptist, did in truth arouse 
and sustain a ready and genuine response to His uncompromising demands, 
and that His death was accomplished before He had been teaching his 
doctrine of other-worldliness three short years, and, ‘az largely in a province 
away from the capital, all because His accusers felt and feared that they 
could not themselves long continue to deceive the people, if He were per- 
mitted to live and teach among them. Under the head of Pietism may 
properly be named a small but worthy group of men known as Essenes. 
In its most flourishing period the number of the Essenes did not exceed 
four thousand nor did they enter into vital relations with the national 
life, yet they gave striking utterance to the spirit of religious protest 
against the tendency toward both legalism and secularism which prevailed. 
Probably no section of Hebrew society in the days of Jesus contributed 
more to prepare the public mind for the reception of His teaching than the 
Essenes. Some have gone so far as to maintain that the household of 
Nazareth belonged to this sect and that our Lord’s silence respecting it 


6 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


arises from this fact. The oft-quoted account which Heggesippus gives of 
James, the Lord’s brother and leader of the Jerusalem church, is construed 
with some show of reason as indicating the possession by that just man of the 
spirit, if not the enthusiasm of an Essene, while such practices among the 
early Christians as the common meal and their desire to hold all things in 
common as well as the early rise of monasticism among them are all 
explained in the same way. ‘‘ The cheerful confidence in God, the love of 
peace, the unselfish life, the communism, the simplicity, the acceptance for 
order’s sake of the law of the land and its administrators, combined with 
contempt for worldly dignities and disdain of personal aggrandizement, the 
love of one another, the tenderness toward children, to the weak, the sick, 
the aged, and the distressed, the love of purity and solitude as enabling the 
powers of the Spirit to recreate and display themselves, the avoidance of 
oaths, the doctrine that great truths are not welcome and therefore not bene- 
ficial to unprepared persons, these are rare attributes, but common to the 
Essenes and the immediate followers of Jesus”. (Keningale Cook). 

From the same writer we quote :—‘“‘ Jesus was wont to argue not only in 
a sublime and generous manner of His own, but also in the subtle manner 
with which the doctors of the law were conversant. He used the forms of 
His times, and, perhaps, would else have been unintelligible, but His own 
splendid powers shine through. He could not have remained in any sect 
and the Essenes for all their spirituality and fraternity were a narrow and 
prejudiced sect, while He manifests the broad, unsectarian impress of 
Heaven”. In these words we have the best that can be said relative to the 
similarity of Jesus’ teaching to that of the Essenes and they are of value as 
showing that among at least one important section of Jewish society in 
Jesus’ day the elements of a true, religious cuiture were openly recognized 
and cherished. 

Under the term Scrzbism may be collated all those movements among 
the religious leaders of the nation which sprang from various methods of 
interpreting the sacred writings of the Hebrews. In addition to the priest- 
hood after the restoration of the Jews from exile, there arose a very influen- 
tial class known as the Scribes. Their great model was Ezra, whose 
work in restoring the national capital and institutions was only equalled by 
that upon the Sacred Canon. As the common speech of the Hebrews 
departed further and further from that of the Fathers and their earlier 
literature, a class of expert copyists and interpreters sprang up, and a new 
national institution gradually took form which became their peculiar arena 
known as the synagogue. This movement and institution promised much as 
a means of preserving pure and untainted the national consciousness relative 
to its calling and destiny, and its influence may be clearly traced down to 
the present day; but it has always sadly failed to grasp the deep spiritual 
message of the Scriptures it has so faithfully guarded and preserved. 
Although the Scribes in Jesus’ day were broader and more numerous than 
any one sect, doubtless the larger number were included in that influential 
fraternity known as the Pharisees. As their name indicates they were 
“ separatists”? because they insisted on the separation of God’s people from 


MEN AND EVENTS IN THE TIME Of JESUS. 7 


all the defilements and snares of the heathen life around them. Their dis- 
tinguishing characteristic was reverence for the law and ‘‘their religion was 
the religion of a book’. Intensely earnest at its beginning, Pharisaism in 
the time of Jesus had lost its fervor and shrivelled up into zealous formalism. 
The written law of Moses had been overlaid and superseded by the oral 
interpretations of the elders known as the Traditions of the Fathers, and 
thus the Pharisees and their Scribes ‘‘sat zz Moses’ seat’’. Together they 
controlled the services of the synagogue with the various ablutions needful 
to the maintainance of ceremonial purity, the distinctions between clean and 


unclean food, the times and ways of fasting and the wearing of fringes and 
phylacteries. 


Their insincerity and bigotry in the case of Sabbath observance was so 
amazing that we are not surprised to find Jesus stigmatizing both Scribes 
and Pharisees as yfrocrites and as ‘‘whited sepulchres which outwardly 
appear beautiful but inwardly are full of dead men’s bones”’. Certain rab- 
binical writers were wont to classify the Pharisees under seven heads. 


(1) The Shoulder Pharisee who wore openly on his shoulder a list of 
his own good actions. 


(2) The Temporizing Pharisee who begged for time in order to per- 
form a good deed. 


(3) The Calculating Pharisee who said ‘my sins are more than coun- 
terbalanced by my virtues ”. 


(4) The Saving Pharisee who said “I will save a little of my modest 
fortune to perform a work of charity ”’. 


(5s) The Pharisee who said “ would that I knew of a sin I had myself 
committed that I might make reparation by an act of virtue”’. 


(6) The God-fearing Pharisee (as Job). 
(7) The God-loving Pharisee (as Abraham). 


The Sadducees were of the aristocratic class, taking their name, as some 
have thought, from the house of Zadok, an ancient and honored priestly 
family and a long-time center of exclusiveness and bigotry. They had been 
successful in gaining and holding the high priesthood and had largely 
shaped the affairs of State. Being brought into contact with foreign ideas 
they had become liberal, and found in their nation’s growth in temporal 
power and influence their greatest satisfaction. Thus a worldly spirit dom- 
inated them in life and doctrine. ‘‘ They had but little sympathy with the 
rigid demand that religion should be the motive and measure of all action. 
They honored the law but refused to consider the traditions of the elders as 
obligatory upon them. Their faith rested upon the wrztten Jaw and they 
could find no sanction in their accepted scriptures for the doctrine of a 
resurrection of the body or of retributionin another world. They therefore 
rejected both”. To the Sadducees the deeper doctrines and preaching of 
Christ appeared doubly visionary and far-fetched, and although they had 
but little interest in His apparent iconoclasm, they were easily led at length 
to see that their earthly prospects were being seriously threatened and 


8 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


willingly gave themselves to carrying out the extreme plans of their Scribes 
as well as those of the Pharisees in condemning and crucifying the Son of 
Man. 


Above and beyond allother elements of Scribism stood the great Council 
or Sanhedrin of Jerusalem. This body falsely claimed to be the successor 
of Ezra’s great synagogue or assembly, but the former was a college of 
Scribes for settling questions of theology, whereas the Gerousia or Sanhedrin 
was distinctly a governing body, exercising the power or powers which in 
earlier days belonged almost exclusively to the High Priest. Although the 
Sadducees filled both the High Priesthood and the majority of the Sanhed- 
rin, it is noteworthy that the Pharisees sometimes arose to a point of influence 
surpassing both combined. ‘The functions of the Sanhedrin were numerous. 
It passed laws and was therefore a legislative body. It executed judgment 
and possessed the most extensive powers. It dealt with questions of doc- 
trine. It kept in its archives the geneological tables of the principal Jewish 
families. It even authorized wars and fixed the limits of towns, and alone 
had the power of modifying their precincts and those of the temple. 


In the matter of penal jurisdiction, the most important and highest 
prerogative of the Sanhedrin, 23 members, called Beth-Din (House of 
Justice), were authorizedto act. Itis probablethat on the night when Jesus 
was arrested, the members hurriedly called together at the house of Annas, 
were not more than that number. This Sanhedrin of Jerusalem which had 
such large powers was not competent to decide all cases or to try all crimes 
throughout the land. Every town, even every village had a lesser Sanhedrin, 
either of 23, or of seven members, in all cases connected with the local 
synagogue. Their place of session however was at the gate of the town. 
The hearing was always public and the judges forbidden to receive presents, 
but the equal cause of justice was not always favored by the elders of the 
people in Jesus’ time any more than in our own. 


These then were the dominant factors in shaping the religious life of 
the Hebrews in the first century. The Sadducees, as we have seen, held the 
official positions both in civil and ecclesiastical affairs, and many of them 
were very rich. The Pharisees and Scribes dominated the middle class, 
while the Essenes refused to take seriously any of the relations or responsi- 
bilities of human society. 


It remains only to mention the great mass of the common people who 
were, generally speaking, a virile and virtue-loving multitude largely under 
the domination of the Pharisees but by no means dead to the appeals of 
either a true patriotism or real religion. But down below all these there 
was a large class of men who had lost all connection with religion and well 
ordered humanity—“the Publicans, Harlots and sinners ”—for whose souls 
no man much cared. To the Saviour these last possessed souls in reality 
less leprous—spirits less blackened—hearts less hardened, and minds less 
closed to His Heaven-given gospel than the wise and prudent, and from 
them He called forth a new and true Israel, and in close co-operation with 
the truly pious remnant of the land, set up the Kingdom of God among men. 





MEN AND EVENTS [N THE TIME OF JESUS. 9 


And thus the Sower went forth to sow His seed. His field was the 
world of human need. His seed was the word of heavenly hope. His soil 
was the hearts of sinful men. Some preempted and filled with the over- 
growth of selfishness and greed, some heaped high with ridges of unyield- 
ing hardness and pride, some trampled and trodden until they had become a 
mere thoroughfare for the conquests of Satan. 

But others prepared and responsive to Sower and seed and sun and des- 
tined to yield at the end of the age, some thirty fold and some sixty fold 
and some as high as an hundred fold. 


* THE STUDY OF THE GOSPEL BY JOHN. 
BY REV. WILBERT W. WHITE, PH. D., 


PRESIDENT BIBLE TEACHERS’ TRAINING SCHOOL, NEW YORK. 


It was about twelve years ago that, with certain misgivings concerning 
the genuineness and authenticity of this Fourth Gospel, I went off into the 
woods on the beautiful banks of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, with my New 
Testament, determined to read the Gospel by John through to discover more 
clearly what my attitude towards the book should be. I had studied it 
considerably before, but that day brought to me a new vision of its unity 
and perfection. 

Turning to the twentieth chapter, thirtieth and thirty-first verses, I read 
the statement there found of the purpose of the writer in producing the 
book. He declares it to have been that the reader might believe that 
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, one might have life 
in His name. As I read those verses that day, the thought came to me to 
begin at the beginning and go through the book to see if the writer made 
his case. Turning to the first chapter I read, ‘“‘In the beginning was the 
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same 
was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him; and 
without Him was not anything made that hath been made”. Having read 
thus far, and being in a somewhat sceptical mood at the time, I said— 
aloud, I think,—‘‘ John, you are not giving me any reason for believing. 
You are making statements here which are very difficult for me to believe ”. 
After a moment’s pause I read through the sixth and seventh verses. “* There 
came a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for 
witness, that he might bear witness of the light, that all might believe 
through him”. When [ had finished, it flashed upon me that John was going 
to introduce testimony, and I saw the picture of a court with judge, witnesses, 
jury and lawyers. I recalled a particular experience of my early boyhood 
when I heard a famous lawyer prosecuting a neighbor who had been arrested 
for murder. I remembered how this lawyer stood up at the beginning of 
the trial and stated to the court and to the jury in propositional form what 
he intended to prove. At the very outset he put the entire case as clearly 
and as fully as he could before his hearers and stated that he proposed to 
introduce testimony to prove all these points. 

While I had recognized that the words “ witness” and “believe” are 
often found in the Fourth Gospel, never before had I appreciated their 
importance. I literally ran through the chapters for other instances of the 
use of these words and marvelled, and still marvel, at the manner in which 
the whole argument hangs upon them, and at the wholeness of the argu- 
ment which hangs upon them. The word “witness” is found, I think, 


* Delivered at the First Conference, held at the First Baptist Church, October 21, 1903. 


Io 


LILES SOD VOOR LE GOSPEL. II 


forty-seven times, and the word “believe” about one hundred times in this 
Gospel by John. 

At this juncture I recalled an experience with the fifth chapter and 
thirty-ninth verse which I had had some time before the day of which I 
write. I had discovered that the Revised Version of 5:39 reads, ‘“ Ye 
search the Scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life”’, 
etc., whereas the Authorized Version reads, ‘‘Search the Scriptures”. I 
was disappointed when I first read the Revised Version of this passage, 
because I had often used the other in my public addresses, and felt that it 
was avery important passage In emphasizing the duty of studying the 
Bible. I determined, however, to discover if the revision were more cor- 
rect. Todo this, I first examined the original and found that the verbal 
form is exactly the same for ‘“‘ Ye search” as for ‘‘ Search”. What was I 
to do next? I did what has very often helped me understand a passage. 
I examined the context. The result of this was that I discovered our Lord 
to be giving, in verses thirty to thirty-nine, a summary of the testimony 
which had been offered often in His behalf to the persons whom He 
was addressing, and in the fortieth verse He tells them what the effect of 
this testimony had been upon them. He said to them, “ Ye will not come 
to Me that ye may have life”. In the thirty-first verse He tells them that 
His testimony concerning Himself is not uncorroborated. If He were the 
only witness of what He was claiming for Himself, He could not expect 
them to believe. In saying this He had in mind the Jewish law that at the 
mouth of at least two witnesses the truth should be established. He 
appeals to the testimony of John the Baptist (v. 33) and intimates that they 
were not consistent in not accepting what John, whom they regarded as a 
very wonderful man, had said about Him. He cites also His works (v. 36) 
and the Father (v. 37) as witnesses, and finally the Scriptures, which the 
Jews were very familiar with. Now, if you will think a moment, you will 
see how unlikely it would be for our Lord to command these Jews, who had 
been all along rejecting Him, and whose unbelief in verse forty he declares 
to be wilful,—how unlikely, I say, that our Lord should command them to 
go home and study their Bibles even more about the Messiah. It was not 
more information they needed. The evidence presented to them was ample. 
The trouble with them was that they would not do that which the testimony 
challenged them to do, and the reason for this was, as given in verse forty- 
two, ‘‘ Ye have not the love of God in yourselves”. The trouble was not 
with their intellects, but with their feelings and their wills. An additional 
reason for accepting the Revised Version I found in the use of the word 
“life”? in verses thirty-nine and forty. The Jews made the mistake of 
thinking that in the Scriptures they had life and they would not come to 
the Saviour in order that they might have life. They made the Bible an end 
in itself instead of a means to an end, a mistake which many people 
are making in the present day. 

This passage lying, as I have above explained, in my mind became 
vividly present on that red letter day of which I am speaking and served as 
the basis of the outline which I submit below, practically all of which was 


t 
~s 


12 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


wrought out that day in the woods and has been followed with various 
classes and by myself many times since, every new study of which brings 
additional light on this marvelous Fourth Gospel. 


LIFE. | 


PR a 
Ye may have life. ie 





Believing ye may have life in His name. | 





These things are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, 
the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in His name. 





I.—TESTIMONY. 


Testimony of John the Baptist. 
Testimony of Jesus’ Works. 
Testimony of the Father. 
Testimony of the Scripture. 
Testimony of Jesus Himself. 
Testimony of Individuals. 
Testimony of the Holy Spirit. 


N Qm £W NN = 


Il.— BELIEF, 

Instances of Belief. 
Instances of Unbelief. 
Development of Belief. 
Development of Unbelief. 
Secret of Belief. 
Explanations of Unbelief. 

7. Results of Belief. 

8. Results of Unbelief. 

g. Duty of Belief. 

1o. Sin of Unbelief. 

11. Time of Belief. 

12. Object of Belief. 
Let us now follow briefly the outline above. 


Nn & WN 


I.—Testimony. 


1.—The testimony of John the Baptist is very prominent in the Gospel 
by John. It is twice referred to even in the Prologue (John 1:1-18). Why 
it is there referred to is a question, to answer which some students reading 
this article may profitably spend several hours. We shall not dwell upon it 
here. 

Nothing is said about John the Baptist in the Gospel of John out of the 
first and third chapters, except at the end of the tenth chapter, where we 


THE STODY OF THE GOSPEL. 13 


read of the people remarking that while John did no miracles, everything 
that he said about Jesus was true. The prominence of the testimony of 
John the Baptist at the beginning of the Fourth Gospel is accounted for, I 
think, from the fact that he was the one who pointed the writer of the 
Gospel to Jesus Christ. John the Evangelist was a disciple of John the 
Baptist. More time than is usually supposed had been spent by John the 
Baptist in instructing his disciples about the Messiah before Jesus came to 
the Jordan to be baptized. John the Evangelist was with John the Baptist 
when he uttered those memorable words: ‘“ Behold the Lamb of God’’, and 
at the suggestion of John the Baptist, John the Evangelist went after Jesus 
and never came back to his old teacher. 

The Fourth Gospel is in a real sense a record of the experience of the 
man who wrote it. I most firmly believe that this material has been given 
by the inspiration of the Most High, and yet I believe that the inspiration 
of the Most High did not in any way interfere with the free action of the 
mind of John the Evangelist, and that we have here a true picture of how 
our Lord impressed him from the beginning to the end. You very well 
know how natural it is when one is speaking of his religious experience to 
mention the one who led him to the Saviour. This is what John the Evan- 
gelist here does. It is worth while noticing as we pass that in this Fourth 
Gospel John the Baptist is always called simply John, and never John the 
Baptist, as is the case for the most part in the other three Gospels. This, 
to me, is one of a number of internal evidences of the genuineness and 
authenticity of the Gospel by John. In the minds of the other writers there 
were two Johns, John the Evangelist and John the Baptist, and to distin- 
guish them they wrote John the Baptist when they had the forerunner of our 
Lord in mind. The writer of the Fourth Gospel, being John, did not thus 
need to distinguish, for those to whom he wrote knew that he meant John 
the Baptist when he merely wrote ‘‘ John”. 5 

The value of the testimony of John the Baptist is very great when we 
consider that he was the most prominent man of his time in religious mat- 
ters. Thousands had been waiting on his ministry and had been baptized 
by him. He was fearless, courageous and truthful. Many thought that 
he was one of the prophets; some even wondered if he was not the Mes- 
siah ; the leaders of the people sent a deputation to inquire who he was, and 
among the questions they asked was this, ‘‘Art thou the Christ?” In con- 
sideration of these things the testimony of John the Baptist is to be given 
great weight. The first chapter of John records the testimony of John the 
Baptist on three different occasions. The first was when the Jews sent to 
him priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘“‘ Who art thou?” He 
assured them that he was not the Christ. With equal emphasis he denied 
that he was Elijah or the prophet. When they urged him to tell them who 
he was, reminding him that they had been officially sent to find out, he 
answered, ‘‘I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight 
the way of the Lord”. When they inquired his reason for baptizing, since 
he was not the Christ, or Elijah, or the prophet, he declared the presence of 
One in their midst coming after him in time, but before him in character 


14 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


and mission, the latchet of whose shoes he was not worthy to unloose. The 
second occasion of John’s testifying was on the morrow after the deputation 
had visited him. When he saw Jesus coming he exclaimed, “‘ Behold the 
Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!” and at once pro- 
ceeded to explain to his hearers how he knew Jesus to be the Messiah. In 
doing this he related how the One who had sent him had indicated to him 
definitely (by what manner we know not) that upon whomsoever he should 
see the spirit descending and abiding, He it was who would baptize with 
the Holy Spirit. Solemnly, in the presence of the multitudes, he pointed to 
Jesus and said, ‘‘I have seen and borne witness that this is the Son of 
God”. The third occasion was on the day after this, when John and two 
of his disciples saw Jesus walking. He once more said to his disciples, 
** Behold the Lamb of God!” 

The testimony of John the Baptist on these three occasions may be 
summed up as follows: 

The worthiest is not worthy to unloose His shoes. 

He is the Lamb of God; the Son of God. On Him abides the Holy 
Spirit. 

His mission is to take away the sin of the world and to baptize in the” 
Holy Ghost. y 

What of the result of this testimony of John the Baptist? Shall we ever 
be able to estimate it? What effect did his words have upon the leaders of 
the people when the deputation reported them? How many people who 
heard John the next day recalled his words later and entered into the rest 
which Jesus freely gives? Weare unable to answer these questiens, but 
we can point to the definite results of John the Evangelist following Jesus, 
and of that quiet Andrew, his companion, also following Jesus. The signifi- 
cance of the latter fact is hardly less great than that of the former when 
one recalls that Andrew found his brother Simon Peter and brought him 
to Jesus. Shall we pause a moment and think of the vast outcome of the 
testimony of John the Baptist through the lives of these two of the four men 
of the twelve who came to Jesus that day. I refer to John the Evangelist 
and Peter the Apostle. 

A word only about the testimony of John the Baptist, as found in the 
third chapter of the Gospel. It is found in the second part of the chapter, 
which contains two notable statements revealing to us much of the char- 
acter of John the Baptist. One of these expressions is, ‘‘ He must increase, 
but I must decrease” (v.30). The other is, “‘A man can receive nothing, 
except it have been given him from Heaven” (v. 27). A few years ago I 
had no particular admiration for John the Baptist. I thought, in the first 
place, that he did not dress well, and then I did not like the kind of food 
he ate, and regarded him as unnecessarily severe. But the more I study 
John the Baptist and the more comprehensive my view of the Scripture 
becomes, the more I admire him. I suggest that you make a study of the 
forerunner of our Lord. Gather all the material in the Gospels about him 
and make an analysis of what he said about Jesus and what Jesus said 
about him, and if I am not greatly mistaken you will learn to love him. 


THE STUDY OF THE GOSPEL. 15 


Before passing from the testimony of John the Baptist, recall those 
words of our Lord in the fifth chapter of the Gospel by John, in which He 
refers to the Baptist’s testimony. ‘‘ Ye have sent unto John, and he hath 
borne witness unto the truth * * * . Hewas the lamp that burneth 
and shineth; and ye were willing to rejoice for a season in his light. But 
the witness which I have is greater than that of John: for the works which 
the Father hath given Me to accomplish, the very works that I do, bear 
witness of Me, that the Father hath sent Me”’. 

2.—Let us now briefly note the testimony of Jesus’ mighty works as 
presented in the Gospel by John. This Fourth Gospel records seven 
notable miracles. They are: 

1. The changing of water into wine, ch. 2. 

The healing of the nobleman’s son at a distance, ch. 4. 

The healing of the man lame 38 years, ch. s. 

The feeding of the 5,000 with the five loaves and two fishes, ch. 6. 
Walking on the sea, ch. 6. 

Healing a man born blind, ch. 9. 

— 7. Raising Lazarus from the dead, ch. 11. 


\ 
Chea eos 


Several observations may be made about these miracles. They are all 
‘found in the first part of the Gospel. A noted commentator calls the 
twelfth chapter of the Gospel by John “the watershed of the book”. The 
verse which indicates the great division of the book into two parts is 12:33, 
at the middle, together with what follows in the thirty-seventh verse, 
“These things spake Jesus, and He departed and hid Himself from them. 
But though He had done so many signs before them, yet they believed not 
on Him”, 

The word ‘“‘sign”’, used in verse thirty-seven of the twelfth chapter, is 
found seventeen times in the Gospel by John. It is used only once after 
this verse in the twelfth chapter, and that is in 20: 30-31, the key passage of 
the book. It will be well here to recall what that passage says, as it 
emphasizes the fact that the signs were given in testimony. ‘‘ Many other 
signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, which are not 
written in this book: but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is 
the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in His 
name’”’. Notice that the antecedent of ‘‘these”’ in verse thirty-one is 
“signs”, and that ‘‘ these signs are written that ye may believe ”’. 

_ The word “sign” is one of at least four words, translated ‘miracle’. 
It has a peculiar meaning, and stands for that kind of a miracle which has 
significance or meaning beyond itself. The selection of miracles which 
John made was for the purpose of setting forth spiritual truth. Hence he 
calls them semeza (signs). It will be very profitable to trace here the fifteen 
uses of the word in the Gospel up to the twelfth chapter and thirty-seventh 
verse. In 2:11 we read, ‘“‘ This beginning of His signs did Jesus in Cana of 
Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed on Him”. 
Here you will observe the effect upon the disciples of the sign. In 2:18, 
“The Jews therefore answered and said unto Him, what sign showest 
Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest these things?” His answer was, 


16 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


‘“‘ Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”. The Jews mis- 
understood His reply, but the writer in the following verses explains that 
after He rose from the dead His disciples believed, for they understood 
that He referred to the resurrection of His body from the dead. The word 
is used a third time in this chapter (2:23), ‘‘ Many believed on His name, 
beholding the signs which He did”’. The fourth time the word is used is in 
3:2, when Nicodemus is reported as saying ‘‘Thou art a teacher come 
from God; for no one can do these signs that Thou doest, except God be 
with him”. The fifth time is in 4:48, “Jesus therefore said unto him, 
‘Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will in no wise believe’”’. The sixth 
time is in 4:54, ‘“‘ This is again the second sign that Jesus did, having come 
out of Judea into Galilee”. The sixth chapter is the banner chapter for 
the use of the word. It is used four times.’ In 6:2 we read, ‘‘A great mul- 
titude followed Him, because they beheld the signs which He did on them 
that were sick’. In 6:14 are the words, ‘‘ When therefore the people saw 
the sign which He did, they said, this is of a truth the prophet that cometh 
into the world”. In 6:26, Jesus said to the multitude the day after they 
had been fed, ‘‘ Ye seek me, not because ye saw the signs, but because ye 
ate of the loaves, and were filled’, and in verse thirty, ‘“‘ They said therefore 
unto Him, what then doest Thou for a sign, that we may see, and believe 
Thee? what workest thou?” In 7:31, the multitude who believed on Him 
said, ‘“‘ When the Christ shall come, will He do more signs than those which 
this Man hath done?” Some, in commenting upon the miracle wrought 
upon the man blind from his birth (9: 16), said, ‘‘ How can a man which is a 
sinner do such signs?’’ Many came to Jesus and testified (10:41) that 
while John did no sign, everything he said about Jesus was true, and, as a 
consequence, believed on Him. After Jesus had raised Lazarus from the 
dead, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered a council and said, ‘‘ What 
do we? for this man doeth many signs” (11:47). A multitude went out to 
see Jesus and Lazarus, after he had been raised, because of the report of 
those who had been with Jesus when He called Lazarus out of the tomb 
(12:18). 

3.—A close study of the passages cited above, in the light of the whole 
plan of the Gospel by John, will indicate how important the testimony of 
Jesus’ mighty works was regarded. The reader is advised to follow up the 
study. Time after time Jesus appeals to His mighty works as evidence 
that He is from God. The fact is, that he joins inseparably the next line of 
testimony, namely, the testimony of the Father, with that of His mighty 
works by declaring that the Father, who is in Him, does the works. He 
declares that His works would not be accomplished were He alone, and 
that His ability to do them should be evidence to all that God was in Him 
and was doing His work through Him. In like manner He, before going 
away from His disciples, intimated to them that should they believe on 
Him the works that He did they would do also. In explaining this, He 
continued, ‘‘ Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do”. Soina 
very real sense we may say that as Jesus doing the works of God, both 
received evidence and was evidence that the Father was in Him doing His 


THE STODY OF THE GOSPEL. 17 


own works, so the Son of God will dwell in us who believe and give to us 
and through us indisputable evidence of His presence by doing mighty 
works by us. Thus may we know that He is the Son of God. 


4.— What shall we say of the testimony of the scriptures, to which Jesus 
appeals? He evidently has in mind the Old Testament. This was the 
Jewish Bible; it was His own Bible. In thus appealing the case beyond 
the limit of contemporaneous testimony, He appeals to voices from the 
past. And in this connection we should note that He appeals also in the 
seventh line of testimony, namely, that of the Holy Spirit, to an authorita- 
tive voice that is to come in the future. He thus looks backward and for- 
ward and makes present, past and future contribute its evidence to His 
august claims. We shall not here attempt to elaborate the testimony of the 
Old Testament in behalf of Jesus. It is very strong and clear. The Old 
Testament would not have been written if Jesus had not been coming. 
We may truthfully say that the New Testament would not have been writ- 
ten if He had not already come. Heis the central figure of the entire Bible. 
To Him every part of it directly or indirectly points. 

5.—The testimony of Jesus Himself, as recorded in this Fourth Gos- 
pel is most remarkable. The emphatic form of ‘‘1”’, in the Greek, is used 
at least twenty-six times in connection with our Lord’s claim. Here are 
some of the expressions in which this is found: ‘Iam He”? (that is, the 
Messiah,), 4:26; ‘‘ Before Abraham was I am”; ‘‘I am the Bread of Life”’: 
“T am the Living Bread”’; ‘“‘I am the Good Shepherd ”’; “I am the resur- 
rection and the life’’; ‘‘ I am the way, and the truth and the life’; ““I am 
the Light of the World”; ‘‘I am the Son of God”’; ‘‘I am the door’. 


Truly this Fourth Gospel is a strong setting forth of the claims of Jesus 
Christ as the Son of God. One does not wonder at the strenuous attempts 
which have been made by the rejectors of the divinity of Jesus Christ to 
prove this Gospel unauthentic and non-genuine. Thank God it has stood 
firm against all attacks and is better accredited to-day than it has ever been. 


6.—Concerning the testimony of individuals as found in the Fourth Gos- 
pel, suffer this single remark. This testimony is introduced in remarkable 
subordination to the general plan and purpose of the book and contributes 
marvelously to its beauty, unity and force. The student may prove this by 
examining in the light of the whole book the testimony of individuals from 
that of Nathaniel, in 1:49, to that of Thomas, in 20:28. *Notice how 
strikingly these fit in with the declared object as recorded in 20:30, 31. 
The book there is said to have been written that ‘“‘ Ye may believe that 
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God”. Nathaniel’s testimony, in 1: 49, is, 
“Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel’’, which latter 
expression is equivalent to saying, ‘‘Thou art the Christ”. Thomas’ 
words are, ‘‘ My Lord and my God”’. Will the reader pause at this point 
and attempt to recall individual testimony as follows: Who in the third 
chapter testifies, and what did he say? Who in the fourth, and what was 
his testimony? Who in the ninth, and what the testimony? Who in the 
eleventh, and what the testimony? 


18 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOAN. 


(A thorough examination of the Gospel for the testimony of individuals 
is earnestly recommended.) 

7.—The testimony of the Holy Spirit has already been alluded to. Refer- 
ences in the Fourth Gospel to this testimony are found chiefly in our Lord’s 
last discourses. There more than once He refers to the coming of the 
Holy Spirit. ‘‘Whom,” said He, “the Father wili send in My name; He 
shall bear witness of Me”. The words of our Lord concerning the testi- 
mony of the Holy Spirit were fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost and after- 
wards. Not for a single moment since that notable day has the Holy 
Spirit ceased to testify in the hearts of believers and through them that 
Jesus is the Son of God. 

At the head of the second part of the outline which we are following is 
the word “ Belief”, which, where it exists, is induced by testimony. 


Il.—Belief. 


That the testimony recorded by John did produce belief is evident 
from the record. The Gospel records instances of individual belief as well 
as of the belief of companies. Individuals, such as Philip, Nathaniel, 
Nicodemus, the woman at the well, and others, we readily recall. Then 
there are such expressions as “‘ Of the multitudes many believed’. It is not 
a little remarkable to notice that there are also instances of unbelief 
recorded. It is what we should expect. In fact, if there were no instances 
of unbelief recorded in the Gospels, we would be disposed to suspect them 
to be forged. They would be untrue to nature. Nowhere to-day, not even in 
the smallest village in any country, does everybody believe. The candor of 
the writer is clearly shown in his recording these instances of unbelief. 
The strength of his position is greater also when one thinks about it, for he 
gives satisfactory explanations of the instances of unbelief. One of the 
most interesting lines of study in this entire outline is that of the develop- 
ment of belief and unbelief. This is seen both in individuals and in the 
body of disciples and of the opposition. The marvelous unity of this Gos- 
pel grows on one as the development of belief and unbelief is traced, of 
belief on the one hand in the disciples as they came better to know their 
Lord; of unbelief on the other in the Jews as they more and more clearly 
took their stand against Jesus. 

Take one or two instances of development of belief in individuals. 
That of the woman at the well is one. At first her estimate of Jesus was 
expressed in the words, “Thou being a Jew’. After brief conversation 
with Him she remarked, “I perceive that Thou art a prophet”. A little 
later she suggested to her fellow-townsmen that He was the Christ. The 
nobleman, as reported near the end of the fourth chapter, believed the 
word that Jesus said when He told him on the way some distance from the 
bouse that his son lived. After his return and discovery that his son was 
convalescent, we read that the nobleman believed and all his house. The 
word “believed” in this last instance contained much more than it did 
when he referred to the road-side experience. So it should be with every 
believer. Every new day should fill the word “believe” more full of 


THE STUDY OF THE GOSPET. 19 


meaning. The man born blind is another illustration of rapid development 
of belief. Reference to the ninth chapter will show that the first estimate 
by the blind man of Jesus was that He wasa man. His words were, “A 
man that is called Jesus made clay and told me to go tothe pool and 
wash”. After he had heard the Pharisees discussing the claims of Jesus 
and His work and then was asked his opinion, he said, “‘ He is a prophet”’. 
He continued to think as he listened to the discussion, and when occasion 
presented itself said, “If this man were not from God He could do noth- 
ing”. After they had cast him out for faithfulness to mental and spiritual 
processes, Jesus Himself found him and said, ‘“‘ Dost thou believe on the 
Son of God?” He answered, ‘‘ Who is He that I may believe?” Jesus 
said, ‘‘ Thou hast both seen Him and He speaketh with thee”. And he said, 
‘T believe”, and worshipped Him. Thus the blind man in a single day 
covered all the distance in the development of belief, from ‘‘A man that is 
called Jesus” to acceptance of this same man and worship of Him as the 
Son of God. To any reader whose eyes are not open to this glorious fact 
the same experience may come if, like the blind man, he has the willingness 
and humility to do what Jesus tells him to do and the courage to testify up 
to the measure of his conviction as Jesus more and more reveals Himself 
to his inner consciousness. 

Of the secret of belief I shall not here speak particularly. It has been 
already in one way or another pointed out. Explanations of unbelief are 
fully given in the Gospel by John. I believe there is not a single case of 
unbelief in the world today of which the Gospel by John does not furnish 
an explanation. Let us note two of these. The first is found in the third 
chapter, also in the fifth. It is a bad life. ‘‘ Men love darkness”’, says our 
Lord, ‘‘rather than light, because their deeds are evil; neither will they 
come to the light lest their deeds be reproved”’. The same is involved in 
John 5:42 and 44. “I know you, that ye have not the love of God in your- 
selves. How can ye believe, who receive glory one of another and the 
glory. that cometh from the only God ye seek not?” It thus appears that 
in the case of some people it is absolutely true that they cannot believe. 
They cannot believe because they will not turn from their evil ways, just as 
aman cannot see the north when his face is set toward the south; just as 
one cannot go towards the east while he is progressing westward. 

The second explanation of unbelief is given in 5:40. ‘Ye will not 
come to me that ye may have life”. Here our Saviour indicates that the diffi- 
culty with these Jews was not that they did not know enough; that they had 
not evidence sufficient, but that they would not act; that they refused to do 
what it was clear they ought todo. This great Physician of souls here 
made a true diagnosis. He located the difficulty not in the intellect, but in 
the feelings and in the will. He said to them, “‘ Your loves are wrong; 
the love of God is not in you. Your wills are wrong; ye will not come 
that ye may have life ”’. 

The results of belief and unbelief as indicated in the Gospel by John 
are the same as those manifesting themselves both before and since the 
time of our Lord. Take any cases of belief in the Old Testament times, 


ees a ae 


20 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


such as that of Moses, or David, or Daniel, and compare what resulted in 
those lives with what the Gospel by John declares to be the results of belief 
in God and you will be struck by the fact that the results are the same. 
Take the case of any believer to-day and you will find the joy and the peace 
and the power and other manifestations of belief to a greater or less degree 
present. In like manner we might speak of the results of unbelief. It 
thus appears that this Gospel sets forth truth for all time; that, in other 
words, it is eternal. 

The duty of belief is set forth on every page of this Gospel. ‘* Whatso- 
ever He saith unto you, do it’’, quietly said the mother of Jesus to the 
servants at the marriage feast. ‘‘ He that obeyeth not the Son shall not 
see life”’, is the solemn declaration of Jesus Himself. The evidences of 
His lordship are so many and so strong that the duty of obeying Him, 
which is what belief means, becomes very apparent. 

One of the most striking passages setting forth the time of belief is in 
the Watershed Chapter (twelfth), thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth verses, ‘‘ Walk 
in the light while ye have the light * * * believe on the light that ye 
may become sons of the light”. 

We cannot emphasize too much the fact that the object of our belief is 
a person, even Jesus Christ the Son of God Himself and not a proposition 
or a series of propositions. Christianity is not mere acceptance of a set of 
doctrines as true. It is personal allegiance and warm, loving friendship. 
“Ye are My friends”’, our Saviour says, “if ye do the things which I 
command you. No longer (that is, not a moment after you do the things 
which I command you), do I call you servants. For the servant knoweth 
not what his Lord doeth. But I have called you friends, for all things that 
I have heard from My Father I have made known unto you”. 

Let me emphasize, in closing this outline study, the distinction between 
explanation and evidence. Christianity bases its claims upon the latter and 
not upon the former, and this is scientific. Explanations come after evi- 
dence is acted upon. There are many students to-day who think that they 
are compromising their intellect if they accept as true that which they are 
unable to understand or explain. In no other department except that of 
religion, however, would they make this demand or have this suspicion. 
The man is mistaken when he says, I cannot believe. He has a miscon- 
ception of what belief is. The fact is that belief has been appointed as the 
means by which salvation is procured, among other reasons because it is 
possible for everybody to believe; that is, to act on evidence. Jesus’ com- 
mand is, “Follow Me’. This anybody can do. His next command is 
“Learn of Me”. This anyone will do if he will obey the first command, 
“Follow Me’. He does not say, ‘Be able to explain the doctrine of the 
divine Sonship’”’. He does say, ‘“‘ Do what I command”. 

An exceptionally intelligent student who had come to accept the general 
views of Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer, and who regarded himself as an 
Agnostic, one day made up his mind that he would fairly examine the 
strongest presentation of Christian truth. He was advised to study the 
Gospel of John. He read it through from beginning to end, taking it 


THE STUDY OF THE GOSPEL. 21 


simply as a book, without examination of outside evidence of its genuine- 
ness. When he read it through he said: ‘‘ The one of whom this book tells 
us is either the Saviour of the world, or he ought to be”. Because of what 
the Book told him of Jesus Christ he was ready to heed the call of our Lord, 
“Tf any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink”.—‘ He that followeth 
Me shall not walk in darkness”. He followed the Light of the world and 
found Him to be his light and is now pointing others to his Saviour. 

The above, related by Dr. Trumbull, is a challenge to every man who 
says, I do not know. For my part, I believe that the same prescription 
would unfailingly cure every Agnostic. Let him with the following prayer, 
thoughtfully and earnestly read the Gospel by John. ‘Oh, God, if there be 
a God, and if Jesus Christ be Thy Son and my Saviour, give me evidence 
of it and I will follow Him at any cost”. Ido not believe that any man 
determined to know and do the truth at all hazards can study the Gospel 
by John through without becoming a Christian. 


* THE FIRST CHAPTER OF THE GOSPEL BY JOHN. 
BY REV. WILBERT W. WHITE, PH. D., 


PRESIDENT BIBLE TEACHERS’ TRAINING SCHOOL, NEW YORK. 


The Gospel by John has a prologue and an epilogue. The epilogue 
constitutes the twenty-first chapter. The prologue includes the first eighteen 
verses of the first chapter. In our study of the first chapter we shall con- 
sider it in three parts. We shall first take the prologue, next the testimony 
of John the Baptist as found in verses nineteen to forty-two, and lastly we 
shall make a brief study of Philip and Nathanael. 


I. THE PROLOGUE. 


What is the purpose of the prologue? One great scholar much quoted 
in these days says, that it was for the purpose of introducing Greek readers 
of Asia Minor to Jewish thought, the body of the Gospel being Jewish. 
There is a measure of truth in this, and yet the prologue itself must be recog- 
nized as Jewish in thought. The outstanding Greek idea which John takes 
up in the prologue and into which he pours more than any Greek ever dreamed 
of, is Logos. In brief, we may say that the purpose of the prologue is to 
introduce. It summarizes in a sense the entire Gospel, setting forth in 
miniature all that follows. There appears to be some ground for the opinion 
that this prelude is tripartate and in widening circles presents the motifs of 
the drama which follows and which describes the development of belief and 
unbelief. The purpose of the Gospel is to prove that Jesus is the incarnate 
Logos. This not by a doctrinal course of argument, but by a biography, 
‘‘and in accordance with a plan which involves two ideas, testimony and 
answering belief.’’ It requires no careful study of these verses to reveal not 
only the claims set forth that Jesus is the Son of God, but also the presence 
of testimony and its result. 

Of the plan of the prologue one need not speak atlength. As has been 
intimated, there appears to be a series of ever widening movements, precur- 
sors of the development which we find in the body of the Gospel. In con- 
nection with the plan of the prologue it might be well to dwell a moment on 
the manifest progression as therein found. This is most clearly observed in 
the three propositions found in verses one, fourteen, and eighteen. The 
Word was God; the Word became flesh; the Word reveals the Father. It 
is interesting to compare the movement in this prologue with the statement 
of the object of the writing of Jobn found in 20: 30, 31. The order found 
there is, first, Jesus; second, the Christ; third, the Son of God. The exact 


*This is the substance of President White’s evening address, delivered at the First Conference on 
the Gospel of St. John, held October 21, 1903, at the First Baptist Church. 


22 


THE FIRST CHAPTER. 23 


reverse of this order appears in the prologue. Why? Because in the 
prologue the claims are logical ; whereas, in the twentieth chapter a summary 
of the historical movement as found in the Gospelis given. In the first part 
of the Gospel the disciples are represented as coming in contact with one 
Jesus, who, after a while is by them acknowledged to be the Christ, and at 
last is confessed even by the doubting Thomas to be the Son of God. In 
connection with those three propositions found in verses one, fourteen and 
eighteen, may I give the following, quoted irom Gomorus, who represents 
Jesus as saying— 

“| am what I was: that is God. 

I was not what I am: that is man. 

I am now both God and man”. 


Il. TESTIMONY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


[See preceding address. ] 


Il. PHILIP AND NATHANAEL. 


In these two men we have completed one half of the apostolic college. 
Six of the twelve apostles are found coming to Jesus in this first chapter of 
John. Jesus, it is said, found Philip (v. 43) and Philip found Nathanael 
(v. 54). The words of verse forty-five suggest enthusiasm on the part of 
Philip in announcing to Nathanael the Messiah. Think of him as seeing 
Nathanael at a distance, perhaps on the other side of a wide street, or on 
the opposite side of a field, and running towards him crying, ‘‘ Oh, Nathanael, 
we have found Him of whom Moses and the Prophets wrote, Jesus of Naza- 
reth, the Son of Joseph”. I think Philip and Nathanael had been talking 
over matters relating to the coming of the Messiah and were looking for 
Him. People who are looking are those who usually find. The answer of 
Nathanael put in the form of a question, ‘“‘Can any good thing come out of 
Nazareth?” did not dampen the ardor of Philip. He was unable to answer 
the objection which Nathanael raised, but he was sure that in spite of the 
objection he had found the Messiah. He did the wise thing. He did not 
argue, but said, “Come and see for yourself’. Nathanael’s response to this 
invitation of Philip is a revelation of his true character. He was an honest, 
earnest inquirer. He was one who was not to be turned aside from investi- 
gation by even a serious objection. He would give more weight to the testi- 
mony of his friend than to a theoretic difficulty. Would that there were 
more of the spirit of Nathanael in our day. 

There are three things which in closing I wish to say about these words 
“Come and see”. The first is that Christianity invites investigation. Not 
only is it willing to have the most thorough examination ofits claims made, 
but it greatly desires just this thing. Its policy is not to ignore or dodge 
any difficulty. On its forefront are written the words “Come and see.” 

The Bible invites investigation. Throw all the light possible on its 
pages. The founder of Christianity invites investigation. His claims, His 


24 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


character, His career, all about Him He would have you investigate most 
carefully. The work of Christianity in the world Invites investigation. It 
says, let on all the light possible. 

A second fact about Christianity is that it stimulates investigation. It 
presents claims which make us think. We should never forget that the 
modern university with all that it involves is the daughter of Christianity. 
May the daughter never deny her mother. The Bible is acknowledged by 
the most eminent thinkers to be the greatest stimulus to human thought. 
No book in all the world’s history has done for the human intellect in the 
way of stimulus what -the Bible has done. The paradoxes which are pre- 
sented in the Bible are calculated to stimulate thought. The superficial 
thinker rejects the Bible as untrue because it has what he calls so many con- 
tradictions. These are only apparent and dissolve on closer investigation. 
An illustration of this we find in this question of Nathanaelto Philip,“ Can any 
good thing come out of Nazareth?’’ The prophets, as Nathanael and Philip 
knew, had declared that the Messiah should come from Bethlehem of Judea. 
It seemed impossible to believe that what Philip said was true, and yet a 
wider synthesis of facts was all that was needed in order to make it manifest 
that both were true. By the mere claim which Philip made Nathanael was 
stimulated to investigate. 

This leads us to the third and last remark that Christianity stands the 
test of investigation. When Nathanael went to see he found things as Philip 
had represented them. Everyone since that has gone to see in the same 
earnest manner has had the same experience. Is it not a remarkable fact 
that no one who has thoroughly investigated Christianity and acted upon the 
command of our Lord “ Follow Me” has returned to tell the world that there 
is nothing in His claims? Is there anyone here who does not know that 
Christ is the Sonof God? My word tosuchan one is ‘‘Come and see.” You 
are challenged to do so by the very claims which are made by those about 
you whom you ought to trust. Philip had never deceived Nathanael. There 
are friends of yours who have always told you the truth. Nota single time 
have they led you astray. They with all the enthusiasm possessed by Philip 
on this memorable day when he called to Nathanael, declare that they have 
foundthe Messiah. Will younot prove yourself to be equally as earnest and 
honest as Nathanael and come and see even though great difficulties 
present themselves to you? If you will do so, you will know that He is what 
He claims to be. He will give you evidence as He gave Nathanael that He 
knows you through and through. Will you please notice that this was what 
convinced Nathanael. When Jesus saw him coming He said to him, ‘“ Behold 
an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” And when Nathanael asked 
Him, ‘‘ How did you come to know me?” He said, “‘I saw thee under the 
fig tree before Philip called thee’. He was doubtless in meditation and 
prayer. Probably asking God to indicate to him the Messiah about whom 
John had been preaching and to give him indisputable evidence when he 
should see Him. His prayer was answered in an unexpected way. At once 
he confessed, ‘“‘ Thou art the Son of God; thou art King of Israel’. From 
that day forth Nathanael followed Jesus and the words of our Lord to him 


PE) LATGS LE CLA PIER. 25 


proved true, ‘‘Thou shalt see greater things than these”. Every day in the 
true Christian’s life new evidences come to him that Jesusis what He claims 
to be. Limitless vistas open before him and he goes on a way of ever increas- 
ing wonder. Will not every hearer accept the statement at the beginning 
of this book, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and act upon it? By this 
means, great doubter though you may be, you will inevitably come to the 
place as Thomas did where in the presence of indisputable evidence, you 
will cry, ‘“My Lord, and my God”’. 


* THE PROLOGUE OF JOHN. 
BY REV. CLARK S. BEARDSLEER, D. D., 


PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL DOGMATICS AND ETHICS, HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL 
SEMINARY, HARTFORD, CONN. 


There are many points of entrance into a study of this opening section 
of John’s Gospel. 

One broad avenue of approach to its meaning is a careful survey of its 
personnel, Were stands a notable company, all so disposed within its far- 
spreading area of thought that each one finds ample room. No one but 
will well repay a close attention. 

Take the task of arranging and naming and estimating the impressive 
array: God, the Father; the Word, the Son, the Incarnate; Believers and 
an Unreceptive World ; Moses and John the Baptist. 

From among these, bring forward to the foreground the figure undoubt- 
edly designed by the author to stand preeminent within the group—Jesus 
Christ. Notice His designation: He is the Only-Begotten, the Word, the 
Eternal, the Medium of Creation, the Light, the Life of all the World. He 
has a world-embracing mission, is dowered with a glory as of God, bears 
within His life and being a full and blessed freightage of grace and truth, 
can secure to all believers the proper title of children in the household of 
God, and from His everlasting home in the Father’s bosom can bring forth 
abounding revelations of the being of the Infinite and Unseen. All this 
opens before one’s eye as he heeds the persons filing into view in this brief 
paragraph. 

Another open highway into a study of the prologue is its action. Here 
is a wonderful drama, with mighty actors, engaged in a stupendous enter- 
prise. There are impressive hints of an eternal companionship of Father 
and Son; of the outgoings of an infinite energy and skill in the creation of 
all existing things; of an awful and far-spread alienation between persons 
who should have remained genially at one; of a gracious, world-encircling 
personal illumination ; of the strangely variant response of unbelievers and 
believers; of an amazing birth from God through Christ of all receptive 
hearts into filial kinship with God; and of clusters of events fit to mark 
world-eras in the ministries of Moses and John. Surely here are move- 
ments of the most vital and majestic type. 

But, among all these living scenes one is central: the Word becoming 
Flesh. Here is mystery beyond all doubt. But here is verity beyond 
denial. And here pure glory is radiant. He who abides eternally with 
God, He who brings a universe into ordered life, He who brings life to all 
who see, He, the Only-Begotten, becomes Flesh that there may come to 


* Summary of address delivered at the First Conference, held at the First Baptist Church, October 
21, 1903. 


26 


THE PROLOGUE. 27 


man from the eternal source of Truth all the fullness of infinite Grace. Here 
is a transaction fit to summon every seeing eye in all the universe to give 
thoughtful, reverent heed. 

And other ways of easy entrance to this gateway of the Gospel of John 
lie in easy view. Let heedful souls find and map out every one. 

Once a man has broken into the rich interior of this short paragraph, 
he is impressed with its arrangement of material in gazvs. Word and God, 
Son and Father, Word and Flesh, Light and Darkness, Being and Becom- 
ing, Faith and Birth, Repentance and Belief, Grace and Truth. Here are 
set together infinite contradictions, contrasts, balancings, complements, 
harmonies, fellowships. 

Tremendous questions surge into a student’s mind. How are the 
Word and God related inherently and eternally? What deeps lie in Son- 
ship and Fatherhood in Deity? How do Word and God cooperate in crea- 
tion? What, quite precisely, are the author’s views of Darkness? How do 
Faith in the believer and Birth from God consort, when people “‘ become”’ 
sons of God? Exactly how does ‘witness bearing”’ corroborate ‘‘light”’ r 
How do Grace and Truth differ? and how do they combine in “Glory”? 
Here are near and obvious queries, and any one of them may sober anyone. 

And yet all these astounding coefficients lie together in this prologue in 
easy fellowship, without any sign of discord or uneasiness. 

Indeed, they truly unify. Though the colors vary strikingly, they evi- 
dently and beautifully blend. After all, the theme is one, the aim is one, 
the effect is one. Here is a characteristic marvel, and herein the prologue 
is like the Gospel as a whole. It isa living unity. Gospel and prologue 
are fluid, not solid. All its elements interplay. The whole of it is every- 
where. The pressure of the entire paragraph pulses and surges in every 
phrase. To state the same truth in another way, its structure is germinal. 
Each sentence is like a living cell; it alone is able to produce the whole. 
The life of all is in each part. Or once again, it is like a diamond with many 
facets, through each of which streams all the splendor in all the gem. So 
wonderful is its unity. Prologue and Gospel are pan-centric. ‘The center 
of gravity is everywhere. It is all central. Every sentence is a radius. 
Every affirmation is an orb. Its aspects vary as might vary the different 
surfaces of a cube, when overlaid with varying hues. Every surface pre- 
sents the total cube. Such is the composition of this section. All its 
factors fuse. 

And they merge in the Incarnate Word. Here is all the manifoldness, 
all the abundance, all the unity, all the simplicity that flash upon the open 
eye at this magnetic gateway to the Gospel of John. In Him is Eternal 
Deity, creative energy, effulgent light, primal lordship, all radiance of glory, 
full tides of Grace and Truth. All verity and harmony reside in Him. In 
Him, as set forth here, all the deep, disturbing queryings, which the various 
factors of the prologue instigate, become tranquilized. 

The ‘‘ World” is His. He dominates its ‘“‘ Darkness”. He radiates its 
“Light”. In His full blendings of full Grace and Truth full ‘‘Glory” 
stands revealed. 


28 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Here is the central reality and the consummate wonder of this prologue. 
Here play all the lasting energies of this world’s life. And here those forces 
find their rest. How is this so swiftly and deftly and simply achieved ? 


This is ¢#e task of any earnest and penetrating student of this introduc- 
tory masterpiece in the matchless Gospel of John, But this is no task for a 
novice, ora man in any impatient haste. It is a task for a master and for a 
life-time. 

One broad assertion may be made at the start. He who fathoms this 
prologue will be a man of one sole aim. He will be seeking with all his 
eyes to find out its conception of personality. 


Within this simple thought range all the areas and slumber all the 
deeps which this paragraph contains. The key to unlock all the mystery of 
Word and God, of Father and Son, of Grace and Truth, of Word and Flesh, 
of Faith and Birth, of Darkness and Light, and of the infinite act of creation 
lies fully fitted in just one deep, true glance into the mighty energies and 
awful antagonisms and blissful fellowships that lie inherent in the qualities 
and capacities of beings who are persons, Zz. ¢., beings who are responsible 
and free. The forces that play across the face of this prologue are persons. 
They are beings who know and choose and judge. They can discern and 
approve and desire. They can also detect and decline. They are inher- 
ently and freely independent. And they are inherently and freely inter- 
locked. They stand in individual integrity. And they stand in social 
fraternity. They may be alienated. They may be reconciled. They may 
be deadened. They may be quickened. They may freely stray in dark- 
ness. And they may freely range in light. They may clarify, or they may 
eclipse their intelligence. They may sully or they may purify their joy. 
They are persons. 


Among them all stands, at the focus of this paragraph, and at the focus 
of the history of the world, the Incarnate Word, the Christ, the Son of God. 
Now mark what is said of Him. 

He is the Word. Heed that. He became Flesh. Ponder here. He 
dwelt among us. Peer into that. He was radiant with Glory. If you 
really have at your command a true intelligence, wse it here. This Glory 
was as of the Only-Begotten. Think what this does verily mean. The 
Only-Begotten of the Father. How far do you really see into the essential 
meaning of this word inthis place? Full of Grace and Truth. Now you 
have struck the center. Do you know it? This (the blended Grace and 
Truth) is the Glory. This beseems the “Father”. This is what radiates 
from the ‘‘ Only-Begotten”. This streams from the “Flesh”. This hails 
from the ‘‘ Word’. And this is the Word who was ‘“ with God”’, who “ was 
God’”’, through whom everything ‘came into being”. This Word was the 
** Life”? which was the ‘‘ Light”, which irradiated all mankind. It was 
He in whom certain men “believed”. It was through Him that they 
became ‘‘Sons of God’. It was He whom divers other men did not 
“receive”. It is He who “is in the Father’s bosom”. It is He who 
“declares”’ the “invisible” God. And He is Jesus Christ. 


THE PROLOGUE. 29 


Now here are overwhelming affirmations. But they are splendidly 
simple. They all center in that blending of Grace and Truth. And the 
blending of the unmixed energies of eternal Grace and Truth form the deep 
and priceless verity, the final and full quintescence of deathless, divine 
personality. This is the ‘‘Glory” of Christ. This is the “Word”. In 
this free range are all the vitality and verity and joy of the copartnership 
of Word and God, of Father and Son. It is an infinite interplay of Truth 
and Grace. 

Herein each is conscious of the solid and unvarying reality of His own 
being in the exhaustless upspringing of His self respect, while also equally 
conscious of a full and joyful outflow toward the other in the exhaustless 
tide of His self-devotion. Truth, the blessed consciousness of the absolute 
reality of Himself; Grace, the blessed, free outpouring toward another— 
here is all the ‘‘Glory”’ of God, all the eternal companionship of Father 
and Son. This in the unmixed purity of the spirit life, and in the unlimited 
fullness of the Transcendent One is personality in blessed archetype. It is 
the unencumbered, unhindered, untiring and unmeasured interplay of Grace 
and Truth. 

The revelation of this is ‘‘Light”. The glad welcome of this is 
“Belief”. The potent engendering of this by God through Christ is the 
first inbreathing of sonship. And herein rests all basis -for pure, abid- 
ing fellowship, whether with brother man, or Christ, or the Infinite God. 
Here is personality in all its immortal nature, and ground, and range, and 
blessedness. Here are the deeps of the fellowship in Deity. Here are the 
deeps of the comradeship of Word and Flesh. Here is the definition of 
Light. This is Life. Here is the ambient tide in which rests so peacefully 
the divinely fashioned keel of human faith. And here, as with the Only- 
Begotten in the Father’s bosom, is the ultimate, and complete, and quiet, 
and joyful haven of human rest. So deep, and strong, and clear is the infin- 
ite love that offers to our wondering eye its deeps in the prologue to the 
Gospel of John. 


Ate Se i a | OF es 


* JOHN THE BAPTIST AND HIS GOSPEL. 
(St. JOHN 1: 19-37.) 
BY REV. WM. ARNOLD STEVENS, D. D., Li. D. 


PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION IN ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL 
SEMINARY, ROCHESTER, N. Y. 


‘*There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John”. Thus 
the history of Christianity, as distinguished from that of Israel, begins—at 
least in the Fourth Gospel. The synoptic narrative takes the same point of 
departure. ‘The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ”, says Mark— 
“John the Baptizer came in the wilderness, preaching the baptism of repent- 
ance unto remission of sins’’. It was in the person of John the Baptist that 
Christianity emerged into history, and by him the foundations of the Chris- 
tian church were begun. The author of Ecce Homo struck a true note in 
his opening sentence: ‘The Christian Church sprang from a movement 
that was not begun by Christ”’. 

The student of the Gospel narrative, his eye fixed upon one central 
figure, may easily overlook the large significance of the person and work of 
John. One indication of this significance is the relative space given to this 
subject. Take the 150 sections into which the four-fold Gospel has been 
divided for the purpose of historical interpretation, 23 of them treat of, or 
have reference to John. Again, in the book of Acts, in at least six passages 
his ministry or his teaching comes distinctly into view. He is especially 
prominent in the Fourth Gospel. In that profoundest of the New Testa- 
ment books there is a distinct recognition of the fact that this man and his 
message must be studied if the redemptive work of Christ and the begin- 
nings of Christianity are to be understood. 

‘Sent from God”, says the record. Every man who fills a place in 
history and renders distinguished service to his generation is in a certain 
true sense ‘‘sent of God”, but the word here means more. The reference 
is not to the fact that John belonged to the priesthood, and had the conse- 
crated blood of Aaron in his veins. Rather that he was sent as a prophet 
is sent, bearing a message supernaturally given, and thus invested with an 
authority which no personal endowment, no sacred lineage, no human insti- 
tution, ecclesiastical or civil, could confer. Such was the claim that John 
put forward for himself, and such the claim that Christ afterwards was dis- 
tinctly understood to put forward for him. The Jewish hierarchy recog- 
nized what that claim to prophetic inspiration and authority meant, and on 
that issue they deliberately and finally rejected him. 

Once for all let us discard that theory which has contributed in so 
many ways to a misunderstanding of the origin of Christianity, namely, that 
John belonged to the old dispensation rather than the new. Dr. Schaft 





* Delivered at the First Conference, held at the First Baptist Church, October 21, 1903. 


30 


JOHN THE BAPTIST AND HIS GOSPEL. 31 


styles him ‘‘ the representative of the ancient preparatory economy ”’, and in 
this sense the author of a recent hand-book on John the Baptist chooses 
as its title, ‘‘ The Last of the Prophets”. This is to forget that the ministry 
of John, lasting, we may believe, nearly three years, was in large part con- 
temporaneous with that of Jesus,—that for nearly a year, perhaps more, 
they were actively engaged in teaching at no great distance from each 
other; that both John and Jesus baptized, and both preached essentially 
the same gospel—that John, as truly as Peter, or Andrew, or John the 
Apostle, was a disciple and a servant of Christ. We are told, by way of 
objection, that John was not one of the members of the kingdom, that Christ 
Himself expressly excludes him from that number. But it was because the 
kingdom had not come. John did not live to see the ascension, and the 
advent of the Spirit ; he could not be included among those who should not 
taste of death till they should see the kingdom of God (Lk. 9:27); but no 
one can accept the historicity of the Fourth Gospel and consistently deny 
to John a place among the ministers of the new covenant. Luke also 
expressly says, ‘‘he preached the gospel unto the people” (3:18). His 
proper place is in that new order of the world that we call Christian. 

Who may fitly describe this great man—great in every true, high sense? 
His picture—the picture of the external man—is familiar, but the Gospels 
give us no biography, no account of his education, of his life till manhood, 
alternating between the temple and the wilderness. Only a few of his say- 
ings are recorded; he transmitted no system of doctrine; the society which 
he formed was not finally to bear his name or acknowledge his leadership. 
Still there is no mistaking the mental and moral stature of this sublime 
man, who has not yet come to his own in history, to whom even Keim’s 
splendid tribute has done only partial justice. 

His greatness grows with time. As Edersheim says: “It is not easy to 
speak of him in moderate language. Above all, it is his generosity and his 
unselfishness and absolute self-abnegation which impresses us. In a gen- 
eration pre-eminently self-righteous, vain-glorious and self-seeking, when 
even on the last journey to Jerusalem the two disciples nearest to Christ 
could only think of pre-eminence of place in the kingdom, and when in the 
near prospect of suffering a Peter could ask the Master, ‘What shall we 
have,?’ when even at the last meal the disciples marred the solemn music 
of this farewell by the discord of their wrangle about the order of rank, 
* * * the Baptist stands alone in his life and in his death—absolutely 
self-forgetful ”’. 

He had, what is so rarely found, self-knowledge, a thorough understand- 
ing of himself and his vocation. And this suggests one of the lessons to be 
learned from his life. He was conscious of a prophetic task, and had pon- 
dered Old Testament prophecy until its thought and spirit had passed into 
his very life. He perceived that the coming of the Messiah for the deliv- 
erance of Israel was conditioned, that it depended in part upon the pre- 
paration to receive Him which the Israelite community itself should make. 
The theocracy must make ready for the coming of its King; there must be 
a spiritual preparation, a revival of faith and obedience. ‘‘ Come out from 





32 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


. 


among them and be ye separate’’. Now John, as Ewald has said, “recog- 
nized the Divine call as directed in the first instance to himself”. Ae was 
the nearest person he could speak to. Not waiting for the nation, not even 
waiting for the appearance of the Elijah who was to precede the Messiah, 
he bowed his own soul before God, and ‘here made ready for the King. 
Not dreaming that he himself was that Elijah, he passed into the wilder- 
ness and became Elijah—the Elijah that was to come. Thus is it, or may it 
be with us all. It is our ideals that shape our destiny. 


“The thing we long for, that we are.” 


The power with which he brought his message to bear upon his gener- 
ation may be measured by its effect. The trumpet blast of his voice shook 
the land. It awoke a reformation, a revival of spiritual life. Herod Anti- 
pas, as well as the rulers at Jerusalem, feared him. For, as Josephus 
relates, ‘‘the people were wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement by 
his words’’, and “‘seemed ready to do anything that he might advise”. 
Even during his imprisonment he had intercourse with his followers. For 
not less than three years, we suppose, perhaps longer, he preached, taught, 
gathered a body of disciples, until his mission was accomplished, and he 
had, in the phrase of scripture, made ready for the Lord “a prepared 
people”’. 

That John preached a gospel we have already shown. We are now 
to inquire, what was that gospel? The answer will be three-fold: 


I. He preached a Christ—a personal Lord and Savior. 
II. He preached the Kingdom of God. 
III. He preached a Gospel of Righteousness. 

I. John preached a Christ, a personal Lord and Savior. The modern 
reader of the Gospels takes this as a matter of course, having in mind that 
the whole Jewish people were in an attitude of expectation. The literature 
of that age enables us measurably to appreciate the tremendous import of 
the Messianic hope—the courage, the recuperative energy, the idealized 
imperialism that were born of it. But that which we are accustomed to 
designate the Messianic hope was the expectation of a kingdom rather than 
of aking. The kingdom was to be restored to Israel. The Jew was to be 
ruler of the world. A monarchy, a throne, a king of the Davidie line, these 
were matters of course, but it was the kingdom that loomed large in popu- 
lar thought. In the compilation known as the ‘ Sibylline Oracles” there 
are certain portions manifestly of Jewish origin, which are on good grounds 
considered at least a century older than John the Baptist. In their delinea- 
tion of the future power and glory of Israel, they scarcely more than allude 
to the Messiah, the King who is to inaugurate the new era. The poet’s eye 
is not fixed upon a person. In the Book of Enoch, it is true, and in the 
Psalms of Solomon, that personal figure is more prominent. But for the 
most part the watchword of the Pharisees was not the Messiah, it was AZa/ 
kuth, the kingdom, and this was equally the case with the people at large. ~ 

John preached the Kingdom of God, but the distinctive feature of his 
message was the teaching concerning a personal King and Savior. He not 


JOHN THE BAPTIST AND AIS GOSPEL. 33 


only kindled anew the national hope, he interpreted it and spiritualized it. 
He turned all eyes upon the Coming One. This supreme thought of a 
unique person as the realization in Himself of the nation’s long deferred 
hope, was not new; it was at least as old as Isaiah, but it was for that age 
vague and obscure, and practically of slight import. John revived it. 
“‘What you have to do with”, he warned rulers and people alike, ‘is not 
the matter of a new polity, a reconstructed civic and social order; the King 
is coming, a King of absolute righteousness, with power to destroy as well 
as to save. Your reckoning is not with the kingdom, but with Him.” 

Of the genesis of this phase of his gospel we are not told, nor when it 
was that he first accepted Jesus of Nazareth as his Lord and Savior. No 
record remains of the day when for the first time he believed on the Nazar- 
ene as the Lord’s Anointed, whose way he was commissioned to prepare. 
But surely that was one of the decisive days of history when the Judean 
prophet beheld in Jesus the Divine One, and had vision, however dim, of 
the glory of the coming of the Lord. How John first discovered Him in 
His true character—whether it was discovery, or by what is in scripture 
termed revelation, we are not called upon to decide. 


“ Who shall draw the mystic line, 
Which is human, which divine?” 


He was at all events distinctly enabled to discern in the lowly man of 
Nazareth the world’s hope, or in the language of his favorite prophet, to 
“see the King in his beauty”. To the multitude the hero of the hour, the | 
great man, was John, not Jesus. But John saw and believed. | H 

It is common to disparage this great act of faith. Because that faith | 
came in the course of the following year to be clouded by doubt, it is con- 
sidered no wise decisive. ‘The inquiry sent from the prison, “Art thou He 
that shall come’”’, in the opinion of Professor Gilbert and others, shows that 
John had not fully accepted Jesus as the Messiah. Butit is surely a false 
principle to interpret his whole past career by that temporary and partial 
eclipse of faith. John’s problem, let us remember, was the same as that of 
the apostles themselves. If Jesus be truly the Messiah, why does He con- 
tent himself with the role of a teacher and a healer of diseases; where are 
the signs from heaven, glorious displays of overawing power? Where is “‘ the 
days of vengeance of our God”, distinctly predicted by the prophets as the 
Messiah’s day? It was a signal proof of John’s faith that he brought his 
great doubt to the Master himself, looked for the answer to Him who alone 
could give it. 

“Did never thorns thy path beset ? 
Beware,—be not deceived ; 


He who has never doubted yet, 
Has never yet believed”. 


These words of a Christian poet are often perverted or misapplied ; 
but they have in them a truth. To quote an anonymous writer: ‘So little 
inconsistent with a habit of intelligent faith are such transient invasions of 


34 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


doubt, or such diminished perceptions of the evidence of truth, that it may 
even be said that it is only those who have in some measure experienced 
them who can be said in the highest sense to believe at all”. 

Even Keim, whose insight into the facts of Christian experience is not 
always the profoundest, says of John’s procedure at this crisis: ‘“ From his 
dungeon, where all vision was shut out, John acknowledges his own subject- 
ion to the person of Jesus”. 


John’s message in the wilderness was not so much to tell what the King- 
dom should be, as who He should be—‘ he that cometh after me”. After 
the baptism he was able authoritatively to identify Jesus of Nazareth as the 
Messiah. Still later, having had, as we may believe, opportunity for personal 
intercourse with Jesus, he could teach that fuller, richer gospel of which we 
have reminiscences from the pen of the fourth evangelist. It is hardly to be 
questioned, I take it, that on the banks of the Jordan, after, ifnot before the 
baptism and temptation, there were interviews which afforded John a nearer 
personal acquaintance with his Master and a better understanding of the 
scriptures concerning Him. 


Taking a general view of both the earlier and the later ministry, John’s 
teaching concerning the person and office of Christ concentrated itself upon 
the following particulars: 


He was the Anointed King of Israel—the Son of God. 
He had had a pre-existence ; he was from heaven. 

He was to rule with justice. 

He was to be a Savior. 

5. He was to bestow the Holy Spirit. 


BW DN 


Our space will not allow us to discuss these separately at length. As to 
the term Son of God, quoted from the Baptist’s teaching in the single 
passage (John 1: 34), ‘‘I have seen and borne witness that this is the Son 
of God’’, it is difficult to determine the precise content. For us now to 
recover the Baptist’s Christology, whether that of the earlier, or of the latter 
stage of his ministry, is manifestly impossible. As it came from John’s lips 
did it stand for the proper deity of Christ, as was the case not many years 
later in the early church? Even now, after the Christian thought of nine- 
teen centuries, there is scarcely a term in theology more difficult to define. 
The faithful interpreter of Scripture will not attempt to read into John’s 
language the dogmatic distinctions of a later orthodoxy. John did not 
preach in the wilderness, or teach to his disciples, the clauses of the Athan- 
asian creed. They would have been incomprehensible to him, even had it 
been possible to translate them into the Hebrew of his day. The Que 
cungue vult,— that whoever will be saved must “ worship one God in Trinity, 
and Trinity in Unity ”’, “neither confounding the persons nor dividing the 
substance’’, we do not suppose John believed or preached. But he does 
appear, in designating Jesus the Son of God, to have expressed a belief in 
his unique divinity, and to have exalted Him above all other humanity. 
According to Stanton (‘‘ The Jewish and Christian Messiah ”’, p. 147) it is very 
doubtful whether the Jews in pre-Christian times ever used the term Son of 


JOHN THE BAPTIST AND HIS GOSPEL. 35 


God of the Messiah. John’s testimony then marks a distinct advance in 
the Messianic idea. 

The remarkable saying in which John attributes pre-existence to the 
Messiah is (in substance) given twice in the chapter before us: John: 15, 
29, ‘‘ He that cometh after me hath been before me, for He was before me”’. 
That John attributed pre-existence to the Messiah need not surprise us, 
considering that the doctrine had already found distinct expression in the 
Judaistic literature of the first pre-Christian century. In the Similitudes of 
Enoch it is said of the Son of Man: “ Before the sun and the signs were 
created, before the stars of the heaven were made, His name was named 
before the Lord of Spirits”; ‘‘ He has been chosen and hidden before Him 
before the creation of the world and for evermore”. ‘“‘The Elect One 
standeth before the Lord of Spirits; and His glory is for ever and ever, and 
His might unto all generations”. As Mr. Charles, in his edition of the 
Book of Enoch, has shown, ‘‘Son of Man” and “ Elect One” are distinct 
designations of the personal Messiah; he says further: the “actual pre- 
existence of the Son of Man is only in keeping with His other attributes of 
universal dominion and unlimited judicial authority ”’. 

But the visions of Daniel belong to a still earlier date. In Dan. 7: 13, 
14 we read: ‘‘I saw in the night visions, and behold there came with the 
clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man, and they came even to the 
ancient of days, and they brought Him near before Him. And there was 
given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations 
and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, 
which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which: shall not be 
destroyed”. Here, as Schiirer says: ‘“‘The doctrine of the Messiah’s pre- 
existence is already stated, for it is self-evident that He who comes down 
from heaven was before in heaven”’. 

The Messiah was to come with judgment, and this was to be not 
punitive merely, but separative as well. The ax brought to the tree, and 
the shovel to winnow grain, are His figures,—and fire. ‘ He shall baptize 
with the Holy Spirit and with fire”; ‘the chaff He will burn up with un- 
quenchable fire’’, so reads the synoptic passage. Here two converging 
lines of prophetic symbolism meet and blend. There isa fire of holiness 
and a fire of wrath. In John’s first use of the symbol, fire denotes the same 
divine principle as the Holy Spirit; in the latter part of the passage it is 
the fire of wrath. ‘John connects the baptism of fire and the judgment of 
fire without discrimination in time just as the Old Testament prophets were 
accustomed to do”’. Thus Isaiah, for instance, views the Messiah’s advent 
as ‘the year of Jehovah’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God”’. 

The Messiah was 70 be a Savior,—a Savior from sin. “ Behold the 
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”. That John took 
his figure of the lamb from the 53rd chapter of Isaiah is now admitted by 
the great majority of interpreters. Whether this be the case or not, it never- 
theless remains true that the lamb in the religious vocabulary of the Jews 
was a symbol of expiatory sacrifice. Still, this utterance attributed to John 
is, if we consider when it was uttered, startling enough. Can he so early 


(eda 3S 


36 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


have seized upon the Christian conception of an atonement made in the 
person of the Savior, which even the apostles failed to apprehend until 
after that atonement had actually taken place? It is not surprising that 
many scholars are inclined to question the literal correctness of the passage 
as it stands. Kohler is one who maintains the genuineness of the Fourth 
Gospel and its historicity in general; he holds, however, that the words 
‘‘who taketh away the sin of the world” are not the Baptist’s own, but an 
explanatory addition of the evangelist writing long afterwards, when the 
idea of the atonement had become inseparably connected in Christian 
thought with the Savior’s death on the cross. But I cannot see that histor- 
ical probability is altogether against the saying just as we have it. John the 
Baptist was deeply read in Isaiah, and Isaiah had shown that the Servant 
of Jehovah, (whether an ideal or an actual person) must suffer. Why may 
not John, on his mount of spiritual vision far above all his contemporaries, 
have had some glimpses, however obscure, of a mysterious tragedy of suf 
fering that should expiate the guilt of human sin and reconcile the world 
to God? 

John’s doctrine of the Messiah reaches its climax in the saying, Jo. 1: 
33: Christ is “He thai baptizeth in the Holy Spirit”. All four of the gospels 
report this saying. It seems indeed to be the keystone of his soteriology. Our 
Lord himself repeated it in the last interview with his disciples on the mount 
of ascension, and Peter quotes it (in the form given it by Jesus) to the 
church at Jerusalem (Acts 11:16). It is remarkable that these are the only 
passages in the New Testament where the baptism in, or with the Holy 
Spirit is spoken of, with the possible exception of 1 Cor. 12: 13. The con- 
ception of the bestowment of the Holy Spirit as a baptism has had special 
prominence in recent theological and devotional literature. It would appear 
to have originated with John. 

In that phrase he seems to have embodied his highest conception of 
Christ’s saving work. By this gift, this sovereign act, Christ was to be the 
founder of the new covenant, and the progenitor of a new race. Harnack 
is strangely superficial in his view that John’s message did not go beyond 
the lines of repentance. Keim is here the truer interpreter, and penetrates 
to the inner secret of the Baptist’s gospel. ‘‘John”’, he says, “is no stranger 
to the notion of grace”. ‘The spiritual stars of the kingdom of God now 
approaching were, for John, forgiveness of sins, and the Spirit of God”. 
Keim practically discards the Fourth Gospel, and therefore comes to this 
conclusion on the sole authority of the synoptic narrative. But the Fourth 
Gospel sets the Baptist’s teaching concerning Christ as the bearer and the 
giver of the Spirit in bold relief. May it not have been due in part to his 
earlier teacher that this evangelist distinguishes the gospel period as one 
during which, as he says, ‘“‘ the Spirit was not yet given’’, and that he, more 
fully than the others, records Christ’s own teaching concerning the future 
advent of the Spirit? 

It has been mentioned above that our Lord Himself in His promise of 
the Spirit’s coming borrowed John the Baptist’s figurative phrase, ‘‘ baptized 
with the Holy Spirit’. In some early copies of Luke the Lord’s Prayer 


JOHN THE BAPTIST AND HIS GOSPEL. 37 


given inthe eleventh chapter had as the second petition, ‘‘ May thy Holy 
Spirit come upon us and purify us”, instead of ‘‘ Thy kingdom come”’, or, 
“Thy will be done”. Christ’s teaching on that occasion was given, as Luke 
mentions, in response to His disciples’ request, ‘“‘Teach us to pray, even as 
John taught his disciples”. It is quite credible that here Jesus quoted, and 
gave His sanction toa petition which had already been taught by John. In 
any case the coincidence is an interesting one, and may again raise the 
question whether John’s preaching was so non-Christian as it is commonly 
represented. 


Il. John preached the Kingdom of God. ‘‘ And in those days came 
John the Baptist saying, Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at 
hand” (Mt. 3:1, 2). Prophets had foretold the founding of a kingdom, and 
this, as we have seen, had become the goal of the Messianic hope. John’s 
doctrine of the kingdom is not even outlined in the gospels. Probably it 
remained undeveloped, as was the case with the apostles until after the 
advent of the Spirit. It is sufficiently clear, however, to what general type 
it belonged. There are at least three prominent types of the kingdom idea 
which have been widely influential in history and in Christian theology. 


1. That of an ecclesiastical state. This was the thoroughly political 
idea that dominated Judaism. 


2. The idea ofa universal church, an ecclesiastical organization includ- 
ing all redeemed souls—the Roman Catholic idea at its best. 


3. The kingdom as an ethical principle—the law of love made operative 
in human society—an idea strongly emphasized in the theology of Ritschl. 


No one of these quite answers to the New Testament idea, or, as I 
understand it, to the teaching of Jesus. In the New Testament it is the 
eschatological aspect that predominates. It exists on the earth, but it 
reaches into the world beyond, and belongs chiefly to an order of things not 
seen or temporal. It is the new spiritual fellowship, the new moral order, 
introduced into the world by Christ—not an ecclesiastical state, not a world- 
church, not an ethical system or society permeated by ethical ideas,—but a 
new spiritually organized life. As it now exists on earth it is the totality of 
the Christian life as opposed to the world’s sin. 

John’s idea of the kingdom appears rather to have conformed to the 
latter type. It was not the distinctive note of his teaching, and he did not 
make it his working idea. It isnot unlikely that the Isaiah doctrine of ‘‘the 
remnant”, which afterwards impressed itself upon the thought of the apostle 
Paul, had its influence in determining John’s conception of the kingdom. 
The prophetic manifesto of the Baptist’s mission, attributed by Luke to the 
angel Gabriel, declares that he is to make ready for Jehovah ‘‘a prepared 
people”. ‘The word for people is /aos, properly denoting not a mere mul- 
titude or aggregate of individuals, but a race or nation. John seems not to 
have expected the existing Israel to be that elect race; there must be 
gathered a spiritual Israel, who should hear the prophetic call, ‘Come ye 
out from among them and be ye separate”’, and who should thus constitute 
“the remnant”. 


eter A ee 


38 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Accordingly he came not only to preach and to teach, but to baptize. 
The Gospels and Josephus are not far apart in their interpretation of this 
characteristic function of his ministry. In both these sources John’s rite 
of baptism is viewed as an associative act. Furthermore, the New Testa- 
ment writers plainly view it as initiatory, marking one’s entrance not merely 
upon a new life, but into a new community. On this point Calvin took 
issue with the Roman Catholic theology which had denied to the Johannine 
ordinance the essential significance of Christian baptism. The Council of 
Trent subsequently reaffirmed emphatically the Catholic position, declaring 
in their decree: ‘If any one affirms that the baptism of John had the same 
force as the baptism of Christ, let him be anathema”. We will risk the 
anathema and side with Calvin. 

The rite as John administered it had a double significance. Regarded 
as the act of the person submitting to it, it was symbolically declarative of 
repentance toward God and of faith in the Messiah. On the part of the 
administrator, on the other hand, it was intended to declare that the person 
baptized had fulfilled the requisite conditions and was now inducted into 
the new fellowship or society. 

Thus John’s doctrine of the kingdom concentrated itself upon the for- 
mation of the new covenant-community which was to supersede the old 
theocracy. His gospel, his ministry as a teacher, lay in part along this line. 
He was to gather and instruct a body of disciples which should become a 
nucleus of the Christian kingdom and church. That body or sect of disciples 
was not itself the church, it was not the kingdom, but it was a religious 
fellowship or society in which the new kingdom first took a partially organ- 
ized form. Its members constituted a quasi-sect, known as the disciples of 
John. They followed certain teachings and observances. Those of them 
who did not fully carry out the instructions of their master and identify them- 
selves with the Christian church remained long afterwards a separate 
Jewish sect, traces of whose existence still remain in the East. 

But, as already said, John’s thought was less of the kingdom than of 
the King—a personal Deliverer. This was the case also with Peter and 
Paul, and with John the apostle. In this respect do they not remain a les- 
son and a lawto us? With the kingdom as a regulative idea and as a work- 
ing principle we have less to do, much more with our personal relations to 
Christ and His church. 

Ill. A Gospel of Righteousness. ‘John came unto you in the way of 
righteousness ”’, said our Lord to the Jewish leaders in the temple,—* John 
came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye did not believe him and 
repent” (Matt. 21:32). Christ here sets the Forerunner’s teaching not in 
opposition to, but in line with His own. For righteousness with John was 
not legalism. This we must insist upon, despite eminent authorities to the 
contrary. 

In the Expositor’s Greek Testament, Dr. A. B. Bruce, contrasting John 
and Jesus, says, ‘‘ The message of the one was legal, the other evangelic”. 
“The Baptist had a passion for righteousness, yet his conception of right- 
eousness was narrow, severe, legal”. And in his comment on the words of 


SOHN THE BAPTIST AND HIS GOSPEL. 39: 


Christ cited above, ‘‘ John came unto you in the way of righteousness ”’, he 
explains them as meaning, “he cultivated legal piety like yourselves”. We 
shall not go to the other extreme and say with Dr. Fairbairn, in his ‘“‘ Studies 
in the Life of Christ’’, that John ‘“ was a sort of personified revolt against the 
law, written and oral”, reviving “the ancient conflict of his order against 
the ritualism of the temple and the legalism of the schools’. But it is 
surely a sheer perversion of the record to put John’s teaching in opposition, 
or even in antithesis to that of Christ. It was Jesus, not John, who said, 
‘Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes 
and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven”. It 
was not John, but Jesus, who said, ‘‘ One jot or one tittle shall in no wise 
pass away from the law until all things shall be accomplished”. The essence 
of legalism consists in substituting the outward form for the inward reality. 
It is satisfied with the external. It is only a nominal, not a real obedience. 
Thus it is not righteousness at all, it is literalism, the letter that killeth, not 
the spirit, that inward reality without which there can be no true normal life. 

John’s message of righteousness was not legalism; on the other hand it 
was not righteousness with the idea of law left out. It implied, as in script- 
ure it always implies when applied to human life and conduct, conformity 
to a standard of duty, obedience to moral law. It describes personal life as 
related to a government, not necessarily to an expressed rule, but always to 
amoral order. The phrase ‘‘conformity to truth” is not sufficient to define 
it; it is conformity to imperative truth. It implies submission to authority, 
to some ruling will. There have been times when it would have been quite 
superfluous to maintain that righteousness in the Christian vocabulary car- 
ries with it the idea of obedience, so obvious and distinct is the thought of 
the New Testament writers on that point. But now the author of ‘“ Pro 
Christo et Ecclesia’ is quoted as declaring: ‘‘ Obedience is not a Christian 
idea, it is an anti-Christian idea, against which our Lord most strenuously 
set His face”’, and a noted German theologian assures us that “‘ Paul is the 
great discoverer of the fact that God and law are mutually exclusive ”’. 

We have already emphasized the testimony of the four evangelists that 
John preached a gospel of grace—of One who was to take away guilt and to 
bestow the Spirit of life and power. It was at the same time a gospel of 
ethical righteousness—of obedience. According to the angelic prediction, 
he was to turn ‘the disobedient to walk in the wisdom of the righteous” 
(Luke 1:17). The Messiah was to be Savior, none the less was He to be 
Lord and King. The majesty and the justice of the divine government were 
to be disclosed in His person. ‘The voice of prophecy had already declared, 
“A king shall rule in righteousness”; ‘‘ He shall judge Thy people with 
righteousness’’. Hence the doctrine of a divine retribution upon the unre- 
pentant was not omitted from John’s message to Israel, and, like Paul, he 
“reasoned of righteousness, of temperance, and of the judgment to come ”’. 

His conception of the kingdom, as we have already observed, appears 
to have remained undeveloped. But it was certainly not that pitiful anomaly 
made prominent in much of the popular theology today, a kingdom without 
government, a conception of the kingdom of Christ in which sovereignty 


ae THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


is unnecessary, which has no subjects who are to obey, and no waaay 
imperative moral order. 

That righteousness in John’s conception, while not legalism, was yet on 
the other hand no mere emotional goodness, but charged with its full ethical 
and positive Biblical meaning, is indicated by the stress which is laid on 
repentance as requisite to membership in the kingdom: “ Repent ye; for 
the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. Repentance as he preached it was 
repentance of sin, and denoted not merely sin felt sorry for, but sin 
renounced, and renounced permanently, perpetually. This is clearly indi- 
cated in Matt. 3:11, ‘‘I baptize you in water unto repentance”. His bap- 
tism was intended to symbolize the final and absolute separation from the 
former sinful life of the person who received it; it was “unto’’, it had in 
view a perpetually realized repentance. 

Thus John’s gospel included the demand for an ethical revival. His 
teaching to his disciples was not only Messianic doctrine, but practical 
religion. Only the merest fragments of his ethical teaching remain, pre- 
served for the most part in Luke. It is beyond the scope of the present 
paper to consider them in detail. We also learn incidentally from Luke 
that there was practical instruction on the subject of prayer. 

If John the Baptist’s gospel was one of practical righteousness and of 
obedience to law, is it not a gospel for us now and here—here in America, 
in church as well as in state? I know of no fact more ominous of evil than 
the effort making in so many quarters to throw overboard the idea of 
authority in Christian theology, and of obedience in the ethics of the 
Christian life. It is the testimony of many thoughtful and competent 
observers that the idea of obligatory law is becoming in a measure obsolete 
among us. What wonder, when a distinguished theologian tells us that 
‘“we must now replace the conception of a divine governor by that of the 
Heavenly Father, and the conception of a divine government by that of the 
divine family”. Neither the prophets of the old nor the prophets of the 
new covenant came with such an exhortation, least of all did John the 
Baptist. Let us rather with him revive the idea of a divine government, and 
educate the modern conscience into an apprehension of its true import. 
Dr. R. W. Dale struck a true note in his volume of discourses, entitled, 
“The Laws of Christ for Common Life’. A single quotation from that 
book may fitly close the present address, and add the weight of its 
eloquent appeal to the moral message of John the Baptist to our own time. 

““The Jewish revival under Hezekiah was wrecked because it was not 
accompanied by a great reformation: in morals. How is it with ourselves? 
Have the religious movements of late years produced any considerable 
ethical reforms? Has the ethical revival kept pace with the religious? 
Has our zeal for the building of churches, for the ingathering of members 
and for religious education been accompanied with any marked improve- 
ment in Christian character ? 

‘“‘We are entreating God to give greater energy and larger success to 
all the various forms of our Christian work. It is very necessary for us to 
remember that we have no right to expect that God will keep His promises 


JOHN THE BAPTIST AND HIS GOSPEL. 41 


unless we keep His commandments. The words of the prophet, ‘Wash 
you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine 
eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well’, were addressed, not to the irre- 
ligious, but to those who were zealous in attending the services of the temple 
and in offering their sacrifices on the altar of God. And the words which 
follow, ‘Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord, though your sins 
be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crim- 
son, they shall be as wool’, are not an assurance that God will forgive the 
sins of men who have lived an irreligious life if they become devout, but an 
assurance that He will forgive the sins of those who are earnest in religious 
services, if they set themselves honestly to the moral reformation of their 
own conduct. If they put away the evil of their doings, if they cease to do 
evil, learn to do well, God will have mercy upon them. 

“No matter how noble may be the churches that we build, no matter 
how solemn may be the religious services which we celebrate, no matter 
how earnestly we may preach the Gospel, no matter with what fervor we 
may pray to God to grant us a great religious revival, we shall fail utterly if 
in our ordinary life we show no practical proof that in the kingdom of 
heaven to which we profess to belong there is a loftier type of character 
than in the world outside.” 


* THE CALL OF THE FIRST DISCIPLES. 
(St. JOHN 1 : 29-51.) 
BY REV. A. C. DIXON, D. D., 


PASTOR OF THE RUGGLES STREET BAPTIST CHURCH, BOSTON, MAss. 


We have in the first chapter of John’s Gospel the method by which 
God calls His disciples and the purpose of the call. The method is four- 
fold and the purpose is five-fold. 


I. THE METHOD OF THE CALL. 


1. By public proclamation. John stood in the open and said, “‘ Behold 
the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world”. If we would 
make the multitude hear the Gospel, we must, as John did, take the Gospel 
to them. If they have forsaken the church, the church must not forsake 
them. They can be found in the streets, and they will come to the theatre 
or secular hall more readily than to the church. Let no expense of strength, 
time or money be spared, that the crowds may be reached with the glad 
tidings of salvation. 

But in John’s preaching there was more than proclamation. There 
was testimony. Thirteen words are given to the proclamation, and one 
hundred and sixteen to the testimony. And though John was no egotist, 
he uses the personal pronouns ‘‘I” and “me” eleven times. He asserts 
the superiority of Christ to himself, and declares that his purpose in bap- 
tizing was to manifest Him to Israel. He tells what he knows about Christ, 
and closes with the superb confession: ‘I saw and bare record that this 
is the Son of God’’. With every proclamation of Jesus there should go our 
testimony as to what He is to us, and the testimony should be as public as 
the proclamation. We preach to the multitude, and have our testimony 
meetings among ourselves. The man without a testimony has no place in 
the pulpit. He is to be a witness as well as a minister, and in the witness 
box there must be a personal knowledge. 

2. By more private proclamation. ‘Again the next day after John 
stood and two of his disciples, and looking upon Jesus as He walked, he 
saith, ‘Behold the Lamb of God’”’. There was no need of his adding, 
“which taketh away the sin of the world”, for these well-instructed disci- 
ples of John knew what the mission of the Lamb of God was. They under- 
stood the symbolism of the paschal lamb, and were looking for Him to 
Whom it pointed. 

These two disciples believed in John, and that made it easy for John 
to win them to Christ. ‘‘The two disciples heard him speak and they 
followed Jesus”. All of us have our little coteries of admirers and friends. 


* Delivered at the First Conference, held at the First Baptist Church, October 21, 1903. 


42 


LE CALE OF LAE, TLR SAPOLSCLPLES. 43 


Have we, like John, won them to Christ? Have we so lived before them 
that when we speak to them of Jesus they immediately accept and follow 
Him? How about our children? Has their confidence in us made it easy 
for us to win them for Christ? Or have we exhibited to them such incon- 
sistencies of life and have indulged with them in such doubtful amusements 
that they have reason to call in question our sincerity when we assure them 
that the Christian life is the noblest and happiest in the world? How 
about our Sunday School class? If we have won their respect and love, 
it will be easy for us to win them to Christ. A young lady in a Bible 
school requested the superintendent to give all her class except two to 
another teacher. He was surprised, and asked the reason. Her reply was 
that all her class except two had been converted, and she desired to retain 
them and seek a new class, that she might win them to Christ. Within a 
few months her heart’s desire was gratified. 

How about those with whom you work every day in the shop or store? 
If you are a consistent Christian, you have influence with them. Have you 
used that influence in winning them to Christ? Two young men at work 
in the same office had great respect for each other, and one of them was 
converted by means of a letter from a friend. Anxious to win his office 
friend to Christ, he one day expressed the wish that he were a Christian, 
when the friend had to confess with shame that he was a Christian, but 
such a negative one that the young man working at his side for a year or 
more did not find it out. The young man won by the letter was H. C. 
Trumbull, who became famous as a preacher, editor and author. The 
office-mate lost the opportunity of doing a great work for Christ and filling 
his life with the joy of feeling that he was a co-worker with God in the wide 
field of usefulness which Dr. Trumbull occupied. 

How about the social circle in which you move? Have you won any 
of them to Christ, or have you so drifted into their worldly thoughts and 
ways that they find that they have won you and that you really have noth- 
ing better to offer them than they have to offer you? 

A successful business man in New York went one evening with his 
wife to an evangelistic: meeting ; and as they were going home she ventured 
to say, ‘‘ My dear, I was hoping that you would tonight manifest some in- 
terest in your spiritual welfare, for I wish you to know that I pray for you 
every day, and nothing could give me more pleasure than to have you be- 
come a Christian”. He replied, ‘I am glad that you have mentioned 
the subject, and when we get home we will talk the matter over’’. After 
they had taken off their wraps and were comfortably seated in the parlor, he 
turned to her and said with gentle earnestness, ‘“‘ Now, my dear, you say 
you want me to become a Christian, and I promise that I will try to be- 
come one if you will show me in what respect you as a Christian differ from 
me-who have made no profession of religion. You go to the theatre; so do 
I; and you seem to enjoy it as much as I do. I play cards, and you can 
beat me. I drink wine moderately, and so do you. I dance sometimes, 
and so do you. I do not lie nor steal nor kill nor commit adultery. Both 
positively and negatively we are alike so far as I can see. You say you 


44 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


want me to be converted. Can you tell me from what or to what I am to 
be converted?” The wife was speechless, but that night, when face to 
face with God in prayer, she said something like this: ‘“ Lord, forgive me 
the great mistake I now see that I have made in dealing with my husband. 
Thou knowest that I have had the motive of seeking to win him to Thee 
and the church by going with him and doing as he does even when it was 
distasteful to me. And now I can see that, though he loves me, he has no 
confidence in my religion. Oh Lord, Thou knowest that I have in Thee 
and Thy work a joy which he has not, and I pray Thee to help me from 
this time to be so faithful to Thee and my deeper spiritual nature that he 
will be convinced that I have something better than he has”. 

If I were to mention the name of this man, some of you would recog- 
nize him as a man eminent in the world of business, and you would also 
recognize him as an eminent Christian worker, giving time and money for 
the advancement of the cause of Christ. And if you gain his confidence, 
he will tell you as he has told others that he was led to seek salvation when 
he noticed that the wife he loved above his life had an experience which 
separated her from the world and gave her a joy superior to the doubtful 
amusements, which even before his. conversion, he believed were not in 
harmony with the pure spirit of Christianity. When our friends in the 
family or social circle see that we have yielded to their ways, they conclude, 
with good reason, that they have captured us, and, though they may 
esteem us for many excellent qualities, they regard our religious profession 
as a sort of fad or idiosyncracy, if not a weakness, that they must tolerate. 
With such an abiding impression upon their minds any spasmodic efforts 
we may make for their conversion during a religious revival will not count 
for much. However convincing the argument that you have the right to assert 
your Christian privilege and indulge things that are not morally wrong, be- 
cause you are not under the law but under grace, it remains true that the 
worldly people who enjoy these things with you are not attracted to the brand 
of religion which you exhibit ; and ifthey join your church it is because they 
regard the church as a worldly institution and they are fit for membership 
because you are as worldly as they are. The men who really win others to 
Christ are the Pauls who assert the high Christian privilege of giving up 
their privileges, that they may not be stumbling-blocks in the way of others ; 
who convince others that they have better meat to eat than that offered to 
idols, that it is no real sacrifice to give up the garlic and onions of Egypt 
for the manna from heaven. Such Christians are the insulated wires 
through which flows the current of divine power. 

3. By individual contact. It is evident that Andrew and John started 
for their brothers just as soon as they were convinced that they had found 
the Messiah. John says that Andrew “first findeth his brother Simon”, 
and the meaning is plain that Andrew found Simon before John found 
James. It was a sort of race between them as to which would be the first 
to find his brother and tell him the good news. Andrew was not a great 
preacher, so far as we know, but on the day of Pentecost, while Peter 
preached with a tongue of fire and three thousand were converted, he had 


THE CALL OF THE FIRST DISCIPLES. 45 


a right to feel that Peter’s great sermon was the echo of the personal word 
which brought him to Jesus. 

As soon as Jesus found Philip, he went to the home of his friend 
Nathanael, and said, ‘“‘ We have found him of whom Moses in the law and 
the prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph’. Nathanael 
was a learned Jew, while Philip was an unlettered peasant, and Archibald 
Brown may be right when he says that Philip misquoted his scripture, for 
neither Moses nor the prophets wrote of Jesus as the Son of Joseph, or as 
Jesus of Nazareth. Nathanael therefore quietly rebukes Philip for his 
blunder in misquoting scripture when he asks, ‘“‘Can any good thing come 
out of Nazareth?”’ Philip acknowledges the mild impeachment as he says, 
“Come and see”. As if to say, “‘ Nathanael, I am not up in Scripture like 
you, but come and see Him for yourself. Though I may blunder in my 
Scripture quotation, I have not blundered in my estimate of Jesus”. And 
thus a man with an experience is ready for soul-winning even though he may 
be ignorant of many things that it is important to know. If you have a 
vision of Christ as the Messiah and your Savior, tell someone else about 
Him. An illiterate cook in a country village won to Christ some of the best 
people in it, because she had a story of personal salvation to tell, and the 
people for whom she worked testified that her character confirmed the 
truth of her story. When Robert McCall began his work in Paris, he knew 
just two sentences in French,—‘“‘God loves you” and “I love you”. He 
spoke these short sentences to the people as he met them on the street, and 
began in this way his most successful life-work. We should be accurate in 
our Scripture quotations, but let not the fear of making mistakes prevent us 
from telling others of the Savior we trust and love. 

4. By the direct contact of Christ. In the case of Philip there was no 
intermediate human agency. Jesus found him and said, “ Follow Me”. 
And shall we deny that Jesus at this day presents Himself directly to the 
minds and hearts of men and wins them to Himself? It is doubtless excep- 
tional, but, in view of this case, I dare not say impossible. It implies previ- 
ous knowledge, for Philip was evidently looking for the Messiah. He had 
read the Scriptures, even if his memory were faulty. And when there is a 
knowledge of the truth, God may move through it directly on the human 
soul. Every flower may suggest the lily of the valley, every stone the rock 
of ages, every star, the star of Bethlehem, every breeze the work of the 
Spirit, every spring of water the fountain open for all uncleanness, every 
path the way of life, every flock of sheep the Good Shepherd, every sparrow 
the care of our Father, every sunrise the Sun of Righteousness, every meal 
the bread of life, and every garment the robe of His righteousness. Christ 
has given to almost everything in nature a tongue of suggestiveness with 
which it speaks in silent eloquence directly to the hearts of men. During 
a revival in a New England town, people were convicted and converted 
before they came tochurch. A wealthy gentleman told me that his ungodly 
coachman, who had shunned the meetings as he would small-pox, was 
seized with sudden conviction of sin while he was feeding his horses, and, 
kneeling in the hay of the stable loft, accepted Christ as his Savior and 


46 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Lord. The atmosphere of the town seemed to be charged with the power 
of God. Such is the case when the word has been faithfully preached and 
the people of God are in the spirit of intercessory prayer. 


Il. THE PURPOSE OF THE CALL. 


1. Zo salvation. John was no mere reformer. He did give advice to 
publicans and soldiers, but it was incidental. The purpose of his life-work 
is seen in the words, ‘‘ Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin 
of the world”. The fact and problem of sin confronted him. He knew 
that men were guilty and lost. The first thing, therefore, which everyone 
needs is a Savior from sin. We are not ready to follow Him as Leader or 
walk with Him as Friend until sin has been dealt with and put away. 
John would have us begin our Christian life at the cross. To the vision of 
man’s need the highest mountain in all the world is Calvary, the only 
mountain that rises above Sinai. G 

2. To fellowship. When Jesus asked the two disciples of John, ‘‘ What 
seekest thou?” they replied, ‘‘ Where dwellest thou?” He saith unto them, 
‘““Come and see”. They came and saw where He dwelt, and abode with 
Him that day. The first impulse of a regenerate soul is to be with Jesus. 
It loves the book, the church, the home, the company where Jesus is wel- 
comed and honored. It shuns the place where Jesus would not be at home 
and happy in His surroundings. It yearns to be with Him all the time. 
And Jesus responds to this impulse of the renewed heart. He invites us to 
dwell with Him. What an evening of fellowship and instruction these two 
disciples must have had. What heart-burnings of love they must have felt ; 
what raptures of joy; what inspirations of hope as He revealed to them His 
inner self and unfolded to them the far-reaching victories they were to gain 
through Him. Now, what they had for one day we may have every day, 
for He said, “Lo, I am with you all the days”. He invites us to an inti- 
mate and perpetual fellowship. The condition is that we go with Him and 
not assert the self-life by asking Him to go with us. Enoch and Noah had 
a good time walking with God, and much of our unrest comes from the fact 
that we are trying to induce God to walk with us. He is always going 
in the right direction, and He always dwells in the right place. Let us seek 
His way and walk in it; the secret place where He dwells and abide there. 
Such constant fellowship is worth all the sacrifice it may cost. 

3. Zo service. After the day with Jesus, Andrew and John are eager 
to tell others about Him. Such is always the effect of fellowship with 
Jesus. It gives courage and enthusiam in soul-winning. It sends us to our 
friends with warm sympathetic hearts. It gives us vigorous faith. There 
is no tremor of doubt in the words of Andrew to Simon: “ We have found 
the Messiah, which is being interpreted the Christ”. ‘And he brought 
him to Jesus”. Such direct personal testimony for Christ cannot fail to 
bring our friends to Jesus when, as in this case, it has in it the fresh glow 
of a present experience. If Andrew had gone to Simon and told him an 
experience ten years old, it would have had little effect. I can imagine that 
Andrew had in his face a glow of hope, love and joy like the shining face of 


THE CALL OF THE FIRST DISCIPLES. 47 


Moses when he came down from a face-to-face talk with God on the mount. 
When people take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus, they are 
ready to hear our message concerning Him. Secret fellowship is the source 
of power in service. 

4. To transformation. ‘When Jesus beheld him, He said, ‘Thou art 
Simon the son of Jonah; thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpre- 
tation a stone’”. As soon as the unstable and impulsive Simon is brought 
to Jesus, our Lord begins the work of transforming his character. The son 
of Jonah has the nature of the dove, easily frightened, but before Jesus gets 
through with him he shall be Cephas, with a character of granitic stuff, 
resisting evil and strong enough to be a pillar in the temple of God. There 
seems to have been a bit of the dove still left in him when at the trial of 
Jesus he took fright and denied his Lord, but it was evidently in its dying 
flutter, for on the Day of Pentecost we find him as bold asa lion and as 
unyielding as the stones of Gibraltar. His first view of Christ begins in 
him this transformation. Simon was usually talkative, but here for once he 
has nothing to say. There was something in the presence of Jesus which 
awed him into silence. The narrative gives us words from John, Andrew, 
Philip and Nathanael, but not a word from Simon. He is too full of thought 
and emotion to speak. He simply listens to the sweetest of voices and 
looks lovingly into the most majestic of faces. The ‘altogether lovely” 
One has thrown a charm of fascination over the rough fisherman. There is 
a spiritual mesmerism to which Simon yields without an effort at resistance. 
He has found not only the Messiah of Israel but the Master of men. Now 
that the sun is in the heavens, all the stars, however brilliant, are forgotten. 

There has begun in him the process by which heavenly character is 
made. John says, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know 
that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as 
He is’. God does not arbitrarily bestow perfect character in heaven; it is 
made by the process of seeing Jesus as Heis. This process is clearly given 
in 2 Cor. 3:18: ‘‘ We all with open face beholding as in a mirror the glory 
of the Lord are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the 
Spirit of God’. Beholding Jesus as the Lamb of God gives us sight with 
which we may ever afterward see Him in all the perfection of His char- 
acter, and “‘seeing Him as Heis” is the means by which the Holy Spirit trans- 
forms us into His likeness. The process with Peter was slow, because, like 
the rest of us, he was often more inclined to look at himself and others than 
at Jesus, and the transformation was thus hindered. But Jesus is patient, 
and, having begun the good work, He will continue it until He shall see in 
us His own image and be satisfied. 

When Andrew brought his rough swearing brother to Jesus, he was 
doing good ethical work. A lecture on profanity would have done little 
good. Doubtless that had been tried more than once. What Simon needed 
was the Lamb of God, who could settle the problem of sin for him by mak- 
ing it possible for him to get rid of its guilt and pollution and give him an 
ideal that would inspire him to nobler living. In Jesus he found both. If 
we would reform our friends, whose bad habits are a grief to us, let us bring 


48 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


them to Jesus. He will begin with them at once, as He did with Peter, the 
process of transformation, and will sooner or later make them not only nega- 
tively good, enabling them to give up bad habits, but positively good in the 
possession of Christian graces. The merely ethical method may cast out 
evil spirits and leave the house ‘“‘ empty, swept and garnished”’, ready for 
‘“seven other spirits more wicked than himself’’, so that the last state is 
worse than the first. But this Christian process casts out the evil spirit and 
fills the house with angels of light, more powerful than all the demons of 
darkness that prowl around, seeking entrance. 

5. Zo vision. ‘Jesus saw Nathanael coming unto Him, and saith of 
him, behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile”. Our Lord said these 
words of Nathanael in such a way that Nathanael heard them. If we have 
anything good to say of young converts, it will not hurt them to hear it. 
And if you have anything bad to say, it ought to be said before them and 
not behind their backs. For this reason I do not send applicants for bap- 
tism from the room after they have related their experience in order that all 
may be free to discuss their cases. Let them remain and hear what is said 
about them. If it is good, they will be encouraged, and if it is bad they 
ought to hear it before it comes to them second-hand and exaggerated, as is 
almost certain to be the case. Nothing ought to be said about anybody 
that we are not willing for them to hear. Truly happy is the young convert 
who, like Nathanael, hears words of commendation from the lips of Jesus. 
He has a foretaste of the joy with which he will hear the words, “ Well 
done, good and faithful servant ”’. 

The answer of Nathanael shows that Jesus had won not only his respect, 
but his love and loyalty: ‘‘ Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the 
King of Israel”. As if to say, ‘‘ Lord, if I am an Israelite, Thou art my 
King. Here is the scepter and crown. Sit on the throne of my being and 
reign supreme”’. The reference to Israel suggests Jacob and his ladder, 
and our Lord uses the vision of Jacob as an illustration by which He gives 
to Nathanael a new vision of Himself as ‘‘ Son of God” and “Son of man”. 
“Hereafter ye shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and 
descending upon the Sonof man”. In other words, ‘‘ Nathanael, in calling 
Me Son of God you have given the top of Jacob’s ladder, which reached to 
the skies; let me give you the bottom of the ladder, which rests upon earth 
—Son of man. Iam both human and divine. In My deity God is made 
accessible to you, and in My humanity you are accessible to God. As God- 
man I am the medium of communication between heaven and earth—the 
Word made flesh. Through Me, as Son of God and Son of man, the mes- 
sengers of your need, your praises and your prayers ascend to God, and 
through Me, as Son of man and Son of God, the messengers of God’s love 
and mercy descend upon you. I am the real Jacob’s ladder, which makes 
not an occasional but a constant vision of the open heaven and an unbroken 
communication between God and man”. 

Such a vision is the privilege of every Christian, and the secret of per- 
petual joy and victory is in translating the vision into daily experience. 
God is accessible to us at all times. He hears our praises and answers our 


THE CALL OF THE FIRST DISCIPLES. 49 


prayers. He delights to give us of ‘“ His fullness and grace for grace.” 
Through Jesus Christ heaven opens toward us for giving and receiving. 
God offers to us His best, and it is fitting that we should give to Him our 
best. 

While Queen Victoria was on her bed of sickness, she said to the chap- 
lain at her side, ‘‘I wish that the Lord Jesus Christ would come in glory 
before I die”. He replied, “‘Why, Your Majesty, do you wish that Christ 
would come before you die?”’ ‘‘ Because’’, she answered, ‘“‘I can think of 
nothing that would give me more pleasure than the privilege of giving to 
Him with my own hand the crown of Great Britain and India”, The spirit 
of Nathanael and of Victoria that would crown Jesus King in every realm of 
our being is the spirit of every loyal son of God, and Jesus is worthy that 
every day should be a coronation day. 


* “SONS OF GOD”, 
“(St. JOHN 1:9.) 
BY REV. FLOYD W. TOMKINS, 8. T. D., 


ReEcTor OF Hoty TRINITY CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA, PA. 


I wish to congratulate you, dear friends, upon these conferences and 
upon selecting for your study the Gospel of St. John, for St. John’s Gospel 
has been attacked more than any other of the Four Gospels, and I suppose 
it has been attacked because it is preeminently the Gospel of believers. I 
think the older we grow the more we occasionally, almost insistently, go to 
it for devotional reading. Itis the Gospel which, under God’s guidance, was 
written for the church—for the members of the church It is most theolog- 
ical in some aspects of it, but it certainly bears very especially and clearly 
upon the believer’s relationship to Jesus Christ. It is in St. John’s Gospel 
that you have the verse which is ¢he verse of the whole Gospel—John 3: 16: 
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life”. It is 
in St. John’s Gospel that you have that marvelous chapter, the fifteenth, 
declaring our relationship to Jesus Christ, our union with Him, and that we 
have that wonderful prayer of our Lord, sometimes called the sacramental 
prayer, in which He prays that there may exist between Himself and His 
disciples the same relationship that exists between God and Himself. 

In fact, there are passages which make us almost hold our breath in 
reverence, and I think that is particularly true in connection with the sub- 
ject about which I am to speak to you. 

“To them gave He power to become the sons of God”’. 

When we remember that in this very Gospel (as Dr. White has shown), 
Jesus Himself was called by Nathanael the Son of God, and when we 
remember how St. John, in his epistles, so wonderfully refers to that fact 
when he says, ‘‘ Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet 
appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall 
be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is”, then we realize the greatness 
of the message. 

‘That we should be called the sons of God”. It makes us fairly 
tremble and hesitate to think any such honor and glory should be given 
to us. Yet, as we read the first twelve verses of chapter one, it seems 
to follow so naturally as the result of God’s coming into this world that 
it is almost logical. Do you remember how it reads? “In the beginning 
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 

“The same was in the beginning with God. 

‘‘All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything 
made that was made. 


* Delivered at the First Conference, held at the First Baptist Church, October 21, 1903. 


50 


SONS OF GOD. si 


“In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. 

‘‘And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it 
not. : 

‘‘ There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 

“The same. came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all 
men through Him might believe. 

‘““ That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into 
the world. 

‘“‘ He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world 
knew Him not”’. 

Saddest verses in the Bible. 

“He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. 

‘But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the 
sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: 

‘““ Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
will of man, but of God ”’. 

You see at once how the very purpose of Christ’s coming into this 
world was that we might be the sons of God. St. John shows in the verses 
I have just quoted that the love of God was so great that He made it possi- 
ble for us to become His sons. ‘There is something to say about this son- 
ship. We are all of us children of God by creation, and as God’s sons by 
creation we can claim something from Him. We may reverently say that 
we can claim from God a way of redemption, because of His creation alone. 
Notwithstanding the fact that we have willingly fallen away from Him, 
since we are His sons by creation we may become His sons by adoption— 
by re-creation. 

Hence you see what a growth there is in our relationshipto God. I am 
God’s child because He has made me. I am God’s child because He has 
remade me, through Jesus Christ. And yet, you notice how the truth 
enters—we are all God’s children by creation, but only those who believe in 
Him have received the power to become His sons by re-creation. Dwell a 
little longer upon that word—son. Just think what it means; the Son of 
God! It means a great deal when we use it—as it is not used here in St. 
John’s Gospel—simply as referring to our creation. That God made me, 
gives me, or ought to give me, self respect; that God made me, gives me, or 
ought to give me, the desire to struggle against all that is evil; gives me, or 
ought to give me, a vision of all that may be mine; gives me, or ought to 
give me, a sense of responsibility concerning my fellow men, concerning the 
world itself, which is God’s world, and which, because it has fallen from 
Him, I, His son by creation, am bound to do all I can to bring back to 
Him. If youcan get no further than this, that you are His son by crea- 
tion, you have gotten a great distance. And I sometimes think we may 
make a mistake in taking men on too rapidly. A great many, because they 
have not been sufficiently or properly instructed, think that because God has 
made them, and because they are His sons by creation, all of these rich 
results necessarily follow. When you turn to the “sons of God’”’ inter- 
preted by ‘‘re-creation””, how much more wonderful it is to be God’s son; 


52 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


to be admitted to His fellowship because I trust Him and love Him; and 
being His beloved son, to be admitted more and more, as I am able to bear 
it, into the mysteries of His truth; to be made more and more the object 
of His confidence; to be made more and more acquainted with the power- 
ful purposes through which He works; to be made more and more in my 
own being after His image—converted into His likeness—and, at last, to be 
permitted to enter into His presence, where s/a// be revealed the very acme 
of glory. 

Remember that wonderful verse in St. John’s epistle. 

“ Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what 
we shall be: but we know that, = He shall appear, we shall be like 
Him ; for we shall see Him as He is’ 

If any man had written these woods without inspiration it would be 
blasphemy to speak them; and, as it is, we tremble and cover our faces, 
and yet that is what being sons of God must mean. 

Now, I want you to think of the way in which this sonship of God by 
re-creation is granted us. I shall speak of the power afterwards. I wish to 
speak of the sonship first. 

We are the sons, or we have the power to become the sons, of God. 
Evidently, this must be something which comes not in a moment but grad- 
ually. Weare made the sons of God by creation in a moment, as it were, 
when we are born; by the very fact of our existence we are God’s children. 
We are made the sons of God by re-creation by a precise power to become 
such—not accidentally. St. John afterwards wrote to the Christians—for I 
think we may take it that his epistles were addressed to the Christians— 
‘““beloved, now are we the sons of God’’, because we have entered into the 
fullness of the Christian life. It is only after years of experience and edu- 
cation that we enter into it. St. John was an old man, and he felt as though 
those to whom he wrote had an experience like hisown. So that to become 
sons of God, we are not suddenly changed either physically or morally, but 
we enter into a new condition. I think that sometimes those who hold to 
the Anglican catechism forget the true meaning of its words. It says that 
we are made members of Christ, children and heirs of the kingdom of heaven. 
The prayer-book undoubtedly means here—for we are told that it teaches 
nothing that cannot be proved by Holy Scripture—that when the individual 
is brought to the blessed gift spoken of by Christ to Nicodemus, he begins 
to grow, he begins to become the son of God by adoption and re-creation. 
I think it is very necessary to remember that, for two or three reasons. In 
the first place, we feel ourselves utterly unworthy in our unregenerated 
state to assume such a title as sons of God. Secondly, we must recognize 
that the grace of God in the individual heart is just like His power which 
worketh in the world: it works gradually. There is at least that much truth 
in evolution: the power of God works gradually. Certain persons, we are 
told in the book of Acts, were in the process of being saved. So it is with 
the man who enters into this state whereby he may become the son of God: 
gradually going on in that state he reaches higher perfection. There is 
something very beautiful to me in this revelation of God in connection with 


SONS OF GOD. 53 


our growth. I go on more and more clinging to Him, trying to serve Him 
and becoming more and more Hisson. And itis more and more a con 
scious relationship. It is not a state merely. It certainly is not only a 
condition, but it is a relationship; the very word itself implies that. 

Take the illustration of my boy. My boy is my son by birth. I stand 
by his cradle and look at him with loving eyes, and I say, “My boy, my’ 
boy’. By-and-by that boy grows up, and he begins to come to me to learn 
he gains confidence in me, and he says, “‘ Papa, I love you”’; he comes to 
me with his sins and says, ‘“‘I am sorry I did wrong”; he comes to 
have a trust in me, and my heart goes out with a deeper and ever deeper 
flow of love for him, and what is the result? By-and-by, when that boy has 
grown up to wisdom, and the strength of intelligence is reached—when that 
boy has grown to a position where he can enter into my plans, can see the 
plan of my life and my plans for his life—then I hold his hand and look 
into his face and say, ‘‘My boy, my son”. Can’t you see the difference 
in that expression from the day when I stood by his cradle of possibilities— 
not yet realized—and the day when I stood by him in his youth and recog- 
nized the growing strength and felt those bonds which through the years 
had bound us closer and closer? It is the same in our connection with 
God in sonship. He puts forth the decree that I shall enter into relation- 
ship with Him, and He gives me the means whereby that relationship may 
be made ever stronger and richer and purer, so that I may become more 
and more conscious of the possibilities of that relationship. He opens the 
flood-gates of His divine love and care for and interest in me, as I am able 
to receive it. And by-and-by the time will come when I shall be like Him. 
That is, when I |shall have proved, through my loyalty, through my love, 
but, above all else, through the power of Jesus Christ, my willingness to 
give all that I have and all that I am to Him, and shall have reached that 
state of consciousness when I realize that it is not I, ‘“‘ but Christ in me”’. 
Then I shall be, as the Lord prays in the seventeenth chapter of St. John— 
I shall be one with Christ even as Christ is one with God. 

Then, again, I want you to understand that this sonship is a relation- 
ship in which we become more and more intimate with God. The old idea 
was that you could not know God. The old idea was that no man could 
see God. Indeed, we have it in the Gospels, ‘“‘No man hath seen God at 
any time’. Yet we have it in the beatitudes, ‘“‘ Blessed are the pure in 
heart for they shall see God’’, and I think this beatitude refers to this life, 
not some future life. I have it in my consciousness that I have been re-cre- 
ated by Jesus Christ; I have it in my consciousness that He is pouring 
more and more of His grace into me, because I am willing and ready that 
He should, and so I enter more and more into a knowledge of God. 

And there we come to what is sometimes called Christian experience, 
which is a very important thing, and which sometimes, oftentimes, we con- 
fuse, with other things because of its frequent use. By-and-by the Christian 
comes to a position where he can say ‘“‘I know”, as St. Paul said; where he 
knows that God is his father; where he knows that, notwithstanding the 
contradictions of life, God is working out a glorious ending. 


54 ' THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


By-and-by he becomes so intimate with God that even though he can- 
not understand God’s working, because God is infinite and he is finite, 
nevertheless he is conscious of God’s truthfulness, and he works in connec- 
tion with it. I goon my work tomorrow. I know not what God has for 
me, but I love Him so, I trust Him so fully and I know so well how He 
loves me and cares for me, that I know whatever comes will be right: I 
know that nothing can happen because God is ordering all things for my 
best good, and consequently for His great and eternal glory. So He comes 
into a practical relationship with life. You cannot live a great life as you 
ought to live it unless youare His. In your life tomorrow—I care not what 
your struggles may be or what your occupation may be—you cannot meet the 
experiences of life, you cannot meet the trials of life, any more than you can 
intelligently study the Word of God unless you are conscious of this son- 
ship. Why? Because it is only to the son that God can reveal Himself. 
It is only to the man who has willingly entered into the state in which God 
reveals Himself to him, and in which he grows more and more into the 
nature of God, that there can come an understanding of how God works, so 
that he can trust himself entirely to God, and do everything that he does in 
God’s name. That is what the apostle undoubtedly meant when he said, 
“ Do all things to the glory of God”. He mentions the small details of life 
which, in the early days, were counted evil in themselves. He says, 
‘“ Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory .of 
God”. That is the beauty of the Gospel, that it leads us not only up to 
the infinite mind of God, but into the kingdom of God in its glory and 
beauty. 

He not only gives me that glorious vision, but He sends me out into 
the struggle of the world, with all its agonies, with all of its friendships, 
with all of its losses, and makes me live the life of a son of God; makes me 
live as one who knows that God is working with him; makes me live as one 
who is. conscious’of a great divine power working behind him. Itis nota 
theological declaration. No truth is true until it is applied, and no truth of 
God can stand as acreed until it has entered into the heart of the individual 
who repeats the creed. So you cannot know what the sonship of God is 
until you have entered into this power in your own lives. 

And there is just one more thought I want to bring out in regard to 
this sonship. It is the way in which, more and more, the man gains power 
himself because he is God’s son. My father, let us suppose, owns some 
land. Heis away. Iam his son. Someone comes and begins to trespass 
upon that land. I go to him and say, ‘‘ You cannot do that, sir”. ‘“ Why 
not?’ he cries out, ‘‘Who are you?” ‘Iam the son of the man who owns 
this land’, And he at once recognizes my authority; he knows that I, 
being the son of my father, have a right to claim that he shall not injure 
that which belongs to my father, a right to protect that which is my father’s, 
because my father and I, supposedly, are wholly in sympathy and our rights 
are common. Now, there you have the secret of human power. There you 
have the difference between the effort of a man to be good in himself, with- 
out any thought of God, and the effort of a man to be good because he 


SONS OF GOD. 55 


knows he is God’s son.’. What a difference there is. I start out tomorrow, 
and I try to be a moral man; I try to make the world better, and I go on in 
my own strength and—fail absolutely. I go out tomorrow, having first 
knelt down and acknowledged my sonship and asked my Father to give me 
grace, and when the troubles come, when I desire to help this one or defend 
that one, when I stand up for the truth or speak against evil, then I am con- 
scious that it is not I alone but God and I. I have the right to speak, the 
right to do, because Iam God’s son. There cannot be any failure in such 
a case. Why? Because God is back of the man, because God is in the 
man. He may be working, probably is working, after a diviner plan than 
the man can comprehend; He probably is working after a very much more 
mysterious plan than the man could understand if God tried to reveal it to 
him. But God and he are working together. 

Now, turn from that to the first part of our verse. ‘Power to become 
sons of God’. Oh, never forget that. You cannot rate it too highly. It 
makes the difference between a human and a divine being, It makes the 
difference between a regenerated and unregenerated being. It makes the 
difference between one who looks up into God’s face, conscious of his own 
unworthiness, but who says, ‘“‘My Father”, and a man who goes around 
and believes in God just as the devil believes in Him and trembles. 

Power. ‘‘To them gave He power’’, and that implies, incidentally, 
does it not, that the human will comes in, and that is where we have often- 
times made a great mistake in connection with both our efforts for and our 
preaching of Christianity. We have not thought enough of the will which 
God has given us. I like, I confess, that grand old controversy which used 
to be very rabid sometimes, which is almost forgotten in these: days: the 
controversy about a man’s free will and God’s, predetermination. I like it, 
not because we can ever solve the problem therein suggested, but because 
it brings out the fact that God, in making man, made man responsible; 
I. will not say God cannot, because I will noti say that God cannot do 
anything, but He zwz// not say to man who will: not love Him;.“‘ You shall 
love Me”. Why? |. Because He respects the individual.,.God wants a vol- 
untary love. I don’t want my boy to love me because he is. afraid ‘not to 
love me, nor because I am his father. I don’t want him to obey. me because 
he is afraid of the results if he does not obey me., I want him to love me 
because he can’t help; it.. I want him todo what I ask him-to:do because 
he wants to, because he loves to please me.. God has made us free agents 
in that. He gave them ‘“ power to become ”’. 

Ah, my dear friends, it is easy enough to stand beforé obstacles; it is 
easy enough to stand, as the children of Israel did long ago on the shore, 
and cry out. The question is whether you have any will in yourself to be 
better and to do better, to overcome. The question is whether your will is 
turned for or against righteousness, whether your will is turned towards or 
away from God. That solves the very primal condition of the religious 
nature. Look into your heart tonight, Christian though you may be, and 
test the growth of your sonship. Do, you will to will those things which 
God wills? Or, are you absolutely indifferent, with no.idea that you have 


56 THE GOSPEL OF ST: JOHN, 


anything to do about it, saying, ‘‘God does everything”? I like the pas- 
sage in the parable of the prodigal son, in St. Luke’s Gospel, where the 
prodigal says, ‘“‘I wz// arise”. There was his personal determination. 
The father standing there could not save him unless he was willing to come 
back; but as soon as he was willing to come, then the father went out to 
save him and to redeem him. And I thank God for this very declaration in 
the words which He has spoken through John, because it respects my indi- 
viduality ; because it makes me feel that anything I do, I do of my free will. 
How was it with the poor woman who touched Christ’s garment? She had 
to do something. She said, “I will touch the hem of His garment”’, and 
she did and was healed. And so in all the great history of the dealings of 
our Lord with men. So with youand metoday. There is a great mistake 
made, I think, in regard to the relationship of the human will to God’s will. 
{ have heard ministers say they are two different things and they come into 
opposition, and there is the cross. I don’t think anything of the kind. My 
will is simply to get into parallelism with God’s will. ‘‘Grant that I may 
will, but will nothing but what Thou willest”. That is a voluntary prayer. 
And then He gives “‘ power to become”’. Now, doubtless it makes some of 
you a little startled because I say this. Centered first of all in the indi- 
vidual. Here is the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ. The minister stands 
in the pulpit and proclaims it with all his power, that God is willing to give: 
but the declaration cannot do anything alone. It is only as the individual 
comes forth and says, “I will” that there follows a result. You must place 
yourself in the right condition if you wish to become the sons of God. You 
can’t do anything for yourself; you can’t manufacture yourself, or remake 
yourself, but you can put yourself where God can remake you. Oh, these 
human wills. God doesn’t break them. He didn’t crush Peter’s will. He 
didn’t make him a different man from what he was, but He put a new 
power into him. He wants you to make your will His. 

Secondly, this power implies, evidently, the work of Jesus Christ. You 
can’t become God’s sons save through Jesus Christ. ‘God so loved the 
world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life’. Then, again, that glorious 
verse quoted before, ‘“‘ Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed 
upon us, that we should be called the sons of God”. Now I am not going 
into any long theological declaration, although I think it would be intensely 
interesting, of the way in which, through Jesus Christ, we are reconciled to 
God; but I think we may not recognize this, that when I have gone wrong 
and am miserable and wretched, even though I may will God’s power to help 
me, I need some manifestation of that power to lift me up. Some have said: 
‘You don’t have any recognition of that in the parable of the prodigal son, 
do you?” I answer that we must not make all of God’s parables teach 
everything of God’s truth, because they are put forward, most of them, to 
declare some portion of the truth. But I do say, that even in that parable, 
although the father ran out and welcomed him and said: ‘ Thou art my son”’, 
yet the son had to be cleansed and clothed, and shoes put upon his feet 
before he was taken into the house. I may willto be God’s son, but my will 


SONS OF GOD. 57 


is nothing without Christ, Who makes it all possible, Who takes away the 
error which covers me, Who opens up the road by which I must go, Who 
places over me the robe of His divine righteousness, Who presents me to 
God as His child. There can be no sonship without Jesus Christ. ‘In the 
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was 
God”. ‘To them gave He power to become the Sons of God”. Oh, that 
glorious power of Christ! Do you wonder that the religion which expresses 
this truth has been called Christianity? Do you wonder that it is in that 
Name that every knee shall bow, while every tongue confesses that Jesus is 
God? Do you wonder that the little child kneeling at his mother’s knee, 
and the man in the depths of the struggle of life, and the aged just about to 
cross the river of death cry alike, “‘ Jesus, lover of my soul’”?? Do you know 
that He makes you a son of God just as soon as you are willing to let Him? 
Do you know that He gives you the power by which and through which you 
grow day by day, having entered into this new relationship? Do you know 
that He gives you the power by which you begin to understand God more 
and more, and to enter into the mysteries of His truth and of His service? 
Do you know that He gives you the power whereby, conscious of the right 
of the Eternal behind you, you go further and further, from victory to 
victory? Jesus, the Word made flesh! Jesusuponthe cross! Jesus exalted 
at the right hand of God! 

Again I want you to notice in the preceding verse and in the first part 
of this verse, the words “that was the true Light, which lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world. He was in the world and the world was made by 
Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own”’, that is, His 
own people and His own nation, ‘‘and His own received Him not. Aut as 
many as received Him, to them gave He power”. eceived/ Sometimes 
people read that ‘“‘believed’’. Belief is a glorious thing. As Dr. White so 
helpfully said tonight, it is the trusting of yourself to God. But that 
receiving, it seems to me, is something which precedes the believing. I love 
that old prayer: ‘Take my heart, oh Jesus, for I cannot give it to Thee, 
and when Thou hast it, keep it, for I cannot keep it for Thee’. ‘“‘ As many 
as received Him”! How beautifull He went to certain villages; they 
received Him, and Hethere could work miracles. He went to other villages; 
they there received Him not, and He could there do no mighty work. I 
receive Him first, as the historic personage, the Being Who once lived at 
such a time and whose truth has conquered the world. I receive Him as a 
divine Being, as Canon Row says: The Man Who never sinned, thereby 
proving His divine origin, because never but once and only once has a sin- 
less man lived. I receive Him as One who has blessed men so that they 
could die without fearing. I receive Him as the One who comes into my 
own life and becomes my Christ, my Savior. ‘ As many as received Him, 
to them gave He power”. First you will; then the power of Christ result- 
ing from your will; and then your receiving that Christ, in order that He 
may give that which you are willing to let Him give. Isn’t it a wonderful 
truth? You see how this growth of which I spoke goes on. I cry, “I am 
nothing of myself, but I do hunger for Thee; I do more and more thirst for 


58 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Thee!” There is my will. Then God responds to that will. He says: 
‘‘ Behold, I am here, my child’’. He stands there and knocks, and when I 
open the door and say, ‘‘Come in”, He enters. That goes on all through 
life. We are so imperfect that we have to renew, as it were, this association ; 
not renew the state, but keep on renewing the conditions. I love that 
passage in St. John where, in speaking to Peter, Christ says: “‘ He that is 
bathed needeth not save to wash his feet’. The conditions have to be again 
and again renewed, just as I wash my hands again and again all through the 
day, but the one fact remains, being done once for all. We have to cry out, 
“OQ God, I need Thee’’, a thousand timesa day. And God says: “I am 
here, my child”. And I cry out, ‘‘Enter in, O Lord, enter into my speech, 
enter into my service; what I do is nothing without Thee”. But His gift to 
me never has to be renewed. 

Again ; God works through means. I am His child by creation, and it 
has pleased Him that my body and my mind should grow by the use of 
those things which He has prepared. [I eat, I sleep, I take exercise, I go in 
and out amongst men, and thereby my physical being grows. And God has 
ordained exactly the same method whereby my spiritual being may grow; 
and without the use of these means, my dear friends, I cannot grow. There 
you have the practical Christian life going on day after day. I must pray. 
I must live in constant companionship with God. I must read His Book; 
it is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. I mustgo to my church 
and worship, for He has promised a blessing where two or three are 
gathered together. I must use what are ordinarily called “the means of 
grace’. John brings out again and again those ordinances of grace. He 
speaks of baptism. He speaks of the Holy Communion: ‘Do this in 
remembrance of Me”. And as we go on using these means, we find that 
the sonship becomes richer and fuller, and God becomes more ies and 
able to pour more and more of His divine power into us. 

I want you to realize, my friends, that this power to become the sons of 
God is something which is of us, in us, and through us by the influence of 
God’s Holy Spirit. There we have the Three Persons in the Godhead 
working together. ‘‘Godsoloved”; Christ coming that we might be saved; 
and the Holy Spirit entering in that the growth may progress. May God 
grant us grace to realize more and more fully in our lives the magnificent 
glory that is ours! And God grant us grace at the same time humbly, 
lovingly to recognize that this is not a birth which comes after any human 
fashion, “‘ Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of 
the will of man, dut of God”’. 


* “FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH” 
(ST. JOHN 1:14.) 
BY REV. HENRY S. NASH, D. D., 


PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION, EPISCOPAL THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL, 
CAMBRIDGE, MASss. 


The text I am to study is a single verse. But at the risk of repeating 
what may have been already said, I must sum up the thought of the verses 
that precede it. The Prologue of the Gospel, the first eighteen verses, is so 
compact, so solidly thought together that an ox team could not draw a 
sentence from its place. So the context is vital to the text. 

The Prologue, at this point, illustrates the working of the author’s mind 
at large. He hasbeen accused of mental monotony. And there isa certain 
justification for the charge. To a singular degree he is one-thoughted. His 
system is all center. He is like the man in our Lord’s parable, who, finding 
the pearl of great price, sold all that he had and bought it. So, both by 
reason of the wider context as well as by reason of the nearer context we 
must gather up the thought of the Prologue in order to enter this verse along 
the line of the author’s own mental motion. 

The theme is the divine tragedy.’ The reality of God has entered history 
and men lack perception of it. The full light of God’s mind and plan of 
redemption has shone forth, and ’tis as if the sun had risen in all its beauty 
to beat vainly against the obtuseness of men born blind. The life of the 
Son of God has been lived out in the midst of the chosen people; and His 
life is as a landscape to a blind man’s eye. 
os The Gospel has two sides. Under one aspect, it is a study in the life 

of Christ. Under the other aspect, it is the autobiography of apostolic faith. 
The author is writing a great tragedy, the story of Israel’s unbelief. At the 
same time he tells us how a few were led into belief, how the Christ educated 
a little body of disciples and friends, leavening them with His life, infusing 
into them His mind, till at last, the eyes of the heart being opened, they 
came to know their Master, in some measure, as He knew Himself, and to 
think after Him His thoughts about God and man. 

Verse 5. ‘The light shineth in the darkness and the darkness did not 
perceive and apprehend it”. Had John known Plato’s illustration of the 
men who lived in a cave and saw the light only as it filtered down through 
their obstinate pride and tenacious prejudices, he might well have used it 
here. 

Verse 11. ‘‘ He came to His own estate” in history, to the land which 
God had chosen for the stage of the redemptive life. ‘And His own 
people’’, His kith and kin, His countrymen, the stewards of His estate, 
“gave Him no welcome” 


* Delivered at the First Conference, held at the First Baptist Church, October 21, 1903. 


59 


60 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Verses 12 and 13. “ But to all those who gave Him welcome” who 
surrendered their prejudices into His keeping, who put their views of God 
and man into His hands, “ He gave the right and the power to become the 
children of God’. I mean says John, ‘‘ Those who believed in His name”, 
that is, those who accepted His view of life, His understanding of the 
national hope of Israel, His revelation of God, as the ultimate truth about 
God and man. We have here a very simple and intelligible description of 
the mystery of the New Birth. To Johnit meant admission into the intimacy 
of the Saviour. Friends live in one another’s life and mind. The new born 
man takes Christ’s point of view for his very own, and so enters into His 
purpose and His power. 

Verse 14. ‘‘The Word became flesh”, The term Logos, translated 
‘““Word”’, as John uses it, has two strains in its pedigree,—the Greek and the 
Hebrew. To the Greek the Logos is the outgoing Reason of God. To the 
Hebrew it is the will and plan of God, entering history to guide and shape 
and control it. Both elements are in the Johannic term. But the Hebraic 
element is the controlling one. The Logos is the full expression of God’s 
mind and heart and purpose touching man’s redemption. 

‘‘The Word became flesh”’. Our word “ flesh” cannot translate John’s 
word. No one can study the Bible long and earnestly without being forced 
to the conclusion that the literal translation is sometimes the worst possible 
translation. In a good translation we must convey not only the logic of the 
original, but its emotion and colour. Now our word “flesh” is too crassly 
physical to convey the feeling of the original. Let us then make use of para- 
phrase and say ‘‘God’s Word, His Self-expression, took unto itself a perfect 
and real humanity ”’. 

Thus and thus alone could God’s thought about men come within reach 
of the everyday man. The Incarnation, to us who deeply and devoutly 
believe in it, is the only possible method whereby God’s whole mind can be 
made intelligible to the commonest man. And we think that the alternative 
is a speculative mysticism, by means of which the man highly favoured by 
talents and leisure may reason and train himself into intimacy with God’s 
infermost thought. But we Christians will have nothing to do with a reve- 
lation of God that belongs to the scholar and the speculator. We are 
common folk ourselves. We have cast in our lot with the common folk, 
And to us the Incarnation is the necessary means and method whereby God 
puts His secrets within the reach of the man in the field and the man on the 
street. i 

“ And dwelt amongst us”? that is, in the midst of the chosen witnesses, 
the men who through intimacy with Jesus had their eyes opened to the 
meanings of His being and work. It was through their faith in Him, their 
spiritual perception of His nature and His mind that the Son of God effected 
a lodgment in human consciousness for His revelation of the Father. 

“‘ And we gazed upon His glory”. It is the eager and attentive look of 
faith that John has in mind. Not the casual look of the passer-by, or the 
indolent glance of the idly curious, but the penetrating look of a man whose 
mind is bound to a supreme object. The man in the street looks at the 


FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH. 61 


starry heavens. The astronomer gazing at them, puts his soul into his look. 
So the chosen men, drawn by the Christ, put heart and soul into their study 
of Him. For this is the deeper meaning of faith; it is the steady attention 
of man to the supreme object of spiritual interest, an eager and tireless and 
piercing perception which will not rest until it has gone to the heart of its 
subject. 


“His glory”. Our word “glory” does not fully or happily translate the 
Greek. The original involves the thought of power and majesty. Read the 
Second Isaiah. He throws a clear light on the larger meaning of the word. 
God’s glory is His mastery over history, manifested through the crisis of 
Israel’s experience, the clear outshining of His will and purpose asserting 
complete control over the nations. So, the glory of the Christ is His master- 
fulness. To the unbeliever He was a bankrupt Galilean. To the believer 
He was the embodied might of God. 


Again the original contains something of the meaning of our word 
beauty. Plato described beauty as the visibleness of truth. John describes 
the Christ as the visibleness of the mind and heart of God. Christ is the 
synonym of God in terms of human experience. He is the beauty of God. 
Through the Incarnation the being of God penetrates history, embodying 
itself in humanity. Thus it becomes compelling, irresistible, even as noble 
beauty is irresistible. So, to the eye of faith, of spiritual perception, the 
Christ is the embodiment of the mastery and beauty of God. 


** The mastery and beauty as of an only-begotten Son”. In the Christ 
God speaks His deep and clear and final word regarding the mystery of our 
life and His life. ‘‘ He that hath seen me hath seen the Father’. God’s 
Son fully represents God to our heart and conscience. Touching Him we 
touch the ultimate moral and spiritual meaning of things. 


“Full of Grace”’. Great words, incessantly used, grow stale. They are 
no longer instinct with expression. And it is a waste of energy on our part 
to refuse to recognize this law regarding words. So we would better disuse 
the word “grace” for a time and substitute a word or phrase which shall 
convey the thrill of the original. Both Paul and John meant by grace the 
insetting energy and love of God. Human consciousness, standing before 
its tasks, is empty of power to meet them, unless God comes to our aid. 
Life, beset by problems it cannot solve and debts it cannot pay, is like a cove 
which the tide has long forsaken. The mud flats lie bare. The rock-weed 
turns brown. But the tidereturns. The cove learns afresh the great lesson 
that the universe cares for it. Irresistible cosmic forces lift the sea and 
drive its waters, in alltheir strength and recreating power, into the forsaken 
cove. And now allis changed. The cove tingles and glows with the sense 
of its kinship to the universe and the confident consciousness of its dignity. 
So with the heart seeking salvation. If it relies upon itself, the tide goes 
out. The flats lie bare. Human helplessness is clearly revealed. But the 
Christ presents Himself to our attention. Through faith we enter into His 
mind and nature and meaning. And lo! a flood of divine energy sets into 
the soul. Life is filled, bankfull, with the consciousness of power and peace. 


62 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


‘“‘ Full of grace and truth”. Once more we must depart from the estab- 
lished translation if we would catch the full force of the original. Our word 
truth, noble as it is, leans too much to the subjective side of experience. 
We have another word, reality, inseparable from truth, that may serve us 
better. John found in Jesus of Nazareth the reality of all the promises that 
God had given to Israel. And thus was he saved from sin and doubt and 
despair. Only reality can save us. The reality of human goodness saves 
us from despair about humanity. We touch the goodness of the saints and 
our confidence in our race is restored. Even so we touch the Christ and, 
in touching Him, touch the very mind and being of God. He is the divine 
reality, the pledge and assurance of God’s power to keep all the promises 
which He hath given us. 

Finally, would we enter deep into this great text, we must think together 
two things which we have been in the habit of holding more or less apart. 
The men of the Bible, both of the Old and the New Testaments, instinctively 
connected the thought of individual salvation with the thought of the King- 
dom of God. The prophet never spoke about his perfection without speak- 
ing at the same time about the consummation of history. The apostles never 
preached or wrote about their own immortality without at the same time 
publishing the news of the returning Christ. 

Therefore, to enter fully into the text before us, let us imagine that we 
have bent our whole strength to founding the Kingdom of God amongst 
men, and that the terribleness of the task has robbed us of our confidence 
and courage. It cannot be done, we begin to say. As individuals we may 
be saved. God’s mercy will take us through death into eternal life. But 
that God’s power and mercy can lift our race and nation to the level of His 
mind and plan, this is too hard to be believed. 

Yet this, nothing less, is the faith that the Saviour imparts tous. He 
brings God’s being and mind close to our consciousness and conscience. 
His revelation of God is not made to the mystic, the scholar and the monk. 
On the contrary, it is made in the very midst of us. —The Word of God takes 
upon itself our humanity and dwells among us. Through the incarnate Word 
the divine being and purpose come upon us with irresistible force to save from 
disheartenment and despair. The beauty of Christ is as compelling, as little 
to be escaped from or disbelieved in, as the beauty of the dawn of a day in 
early June. The eye makes a love-match with the sun, and lo! the wonder 
and splendor of the visible world. So the eye of the heart, through our dis- 
covery of the Christ, makes a love-match with the being and beauty of God. 
One cannot doubt. One cannot falter. He joyously surrenders himself to 
-an unconquerable faith in humanity. ‘The Word took upon Himself our 
humanity and dwelt in the midst of us. And we gazed upon His beauty and 
splendor, the splendor as of one who is the only Son of His Father, full of 

_Saving power and convincing reality ”. 


* THE MIRACLE AT CANA 
With an attempt at a Philosophy of Miracles. 


St. JOHN 2:1-I1.) 
BY REV. AUGUSTUS H. STRONG, D. D., LiL. D., 


PRESIDENT OF ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, ROCHESTER, N. Y. 


This Fourth Gospel was written long after Matthew, Mark and Luke. 
It was intended as a supplement to them. The Synoptics give us the main 
facts of Jesus’ life and teaching, his works, his death, his resurrection. 
This Gospel gives us the explanation of the facts, in the eternity, the person- 
ality, the deity of Christ himself. It presupposes the previous Gospels and 
builds upon them, yet it adds but few facts to those which they relate. The 
miracle of Cana is the first miracle that Jesus wrought, and it gives the rule 
and type of all his miracles. The purpose of it is intimated when the evan- 
gelist tells us that “this beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, 
and manifested his glory”. 

That word “glory” takes us back to the first chapter of the Gospel, and 
we shall better understand the miracle if we consider the place which it 
occupies in the Gospel as awhole. True to his purpose of explanation, 
John begins with a thesis or proposition which he proceeds to demonstrate. 
He solves all the problems of the Synoptics by boldly asserting at the very 
start that the eternal Word of God has been manifested in Jesus of Nazareth. 
It is an argument from the divine to the human, as John’s first Epistle is an 
argument from the human to the divine. The argument, however, is de- 
ductive rather than inductive. It propounds a principle and then proceeds 
to point out the operation of it. It declares Christ to be nothing less than 
Deity revealed, and then shows that this necessarily makes him not only 
the Christ for whom the Old Testament had prepared the way, but also the 
Son of God who has wider relations as Lord of the Universe and Savior of 
mankind. 

The Synoptics had been content to trace Jesus’ origin back to Abraham 
and to Adam. The Fourth Gospel asserts that before Abraham was born, 
Christ already was; nay, it maintains that Christ was the Creator not only 
of Abraham but of all humanity. It goes even further and holds that Christ 
is God’s only medium of communication and activity; he is the preserver 
as well as the creator of all, and whatever has come into being is life only 
in him.. Since he is the life of the universe, he can be its light, and all 
knowledge of God and of truth proceeds from him. Christ is the only 

‘Revealer of God. He has been revealing God throughout all human his- 
tory. The darkness of sin has not been able to overcome or suppress his 
light, even among the heathen. But the incarnation has concentrated his 


* Delivered at the Second Conference, held at the Mathewson Street Methodist Episcopal Church, 
November 11, 1903. 


63 


64 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


rays. Better even than Moses and the Law are the grace and truth revealed 
in Jesus of Nazareth. 

There is opposition to Christ, but this very opposition is a proof of 
Christ’s deity. Sin must resist holiness; selfishness must resist love. Holi- 
ness and love, however, will attract to themselves their like. There will be 
increasing faith on the part of some, though there is increasing unbelief on 
the part of others. Hence this Gospel is the record of two opposing ten- 
dencies. God’s self-manifestation in Christ stirs up hatred that brings the 
Savior to the Cross, but it also awakens love that ensures the triumph of 
his kingdom. Side by side with the growing opposition on the part of the 
Jews is the growing devotion of Christ’s disciples. They have every 
worldly example and inducement to forsake him. When they do yield to 
his claims and recognize his authority, the victory is won, the demon- 
stration is complete, the thesis is proved. And this point is reached when 
Thomas, the most skeptical of the apostles, is moved after Jesus’ resurrec- 
tion to bow at his feet and cry: ‘‘My Lord and my God!” This is the 
proper end of the Gospel, and all that follows in the last chapter is only a 
supplement, designed to show why it was that John’s service upon earth 
lasted so much longer than Peter’s. 

The progressive revelation of Christ’s glory—this is the central theme 
of the Fourth Gospel. The first chapter, in which the thesis is stated and 
the witness of John the Baptist is given, is naturally followed by the second 
chapter, in which Christ manifests his glory, first by turning water into 
wine, and secondly by driving the traders out of the temple. There is an 
organic connection between the first chapter and the second which forbids 
us to regard the sublime declarations of the first chapter as of later author- 
ship. The glory is declared in chapter one; the glory is manifested in 
chapter two. John, the protector and adopted son of Mary the Virgin, is 
the natural custodian and narrator of the miracle of Cana—a miracle 
wrought within a family circle, and therefore either unknown to the other 
evangelists, or seeming to them outside the range of Jesus’ official ministry 
—an evidence that this Fourth Gospel had John for its author. 

That this beginning of miracles was wrought in so humble a sphere is 
quite of a piece with the general plan of Christ—his kingdom did not come 
with observation. He was not born at Rome, but at Bethlehem ; his crown 
was not of gold, but of thorns. He shows us what true glory is; self-abne- 
gation reveals God best; to him the cross was a lifting up. Not among 
“the people’, or ‘‘the world”, was this wonder performed, but in the 
narrow circle of the family. Though he had just come from his baptism 
into death and from his struggle with infernal powers in the wilderness, 
he begins his ministry with no sounding of trumpets or clangor of arms. 
Instead of this, he enters sympathetically and joyously into the humble 
and common life of men, helping the poor, increasing their joy, consecrat- 
ing their marriage. 

The simplicity of the story carries conviction of its truth. The late 
arrival of Jesus and of his newly chosen disciples increased unexpectedly 


THE MIRACLE AT CANA. 65 


the number of the guests. The mother, who had been already on the 
ground, perceived that the resources of the household were exhausted 
‘and that the married pair were exposed to embarrassment. With expecta- 
tions, long suppressed, but newly awakened by reports of the Baptist’s recog- 
nition of her Son at the Jordan, expectations of some revelation of his 
power, she whispered to him that “they have no wine”. It is an intrusion 
of her motherly influence into a sphere that is above her. Jesus gently 
puts aside all authority but that of his mission and of the God who sent 
him. But at the same time he shows that Mary’s expectations were not 
irrational, for he furnishes wine, and in such abundance that it serves as 
a symbol of the royal generosity of the gifts of God. 

Why should we think of the story as merely a parable? All interpreta- 
tions that ignore the miraculous element are even more far fetched and 
incredible than the miracle itself would be. ‘‘ Jesus’ conversation was so 
entertaining that the guests said: What good wine we have had!”. All this 
is to contradict the plain teaching of the narrative. The evangelist evi- 
dently intended to describe a miracle. The testimony of the servants shows 
what was in the jars; the testimony of the ruler of the feast shows what it 
has become. The “ filling to the brim” has no meaning, unless it is meant 
that the contents of all the six water-pots was changed to wine. The very 
superfluity of the provision was necessary to justify the solemn conclusion 

-of the account: ‘“‘ This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, 
and manifested his glory: and his disciples believed on him”’. 

What was this glory, which the miracle made manifest? It was three- 
fold, and, in each of its three aspects, it had to do with nature, and with 
Christ’s relation to nature. It was, first of all, the glory of Christ as the 
Life of Nature. We constantly tend to an atheistic and unchristian view of 
nature. We think of it as self-originated, as sufficient to itself, as indepen- 
dent of God. This miracle shows us on the contrary that nature is only the 
expression of the divine mind and will, and that this divine mind and will is 
the mind and will of Jesus Christ. He who created the universe has not 
abandoned the universe. Our gospel designates Christ’s creative activity 
not by the preposition wpo, “‘by”’, but by the preposition da, “ through ”’. 
Creation is not the work of an absent, but of a present, Christ. And so with 
preservation. Only through his constant activity do the forces and laws of 
the universe maintain their existence. Matter is not dead but living, and 
it is Christ who upholds all things by the word of his power. And so we, 
who believe in Christ, 


“ Behind creation’s throbbing screen 
Catch movements of the great Unseen”. 


If all that has come into being is, as our gospel says, “life in him ”’, then 
nature is plastic in the hand of Christ. His will is a free will. He is not 
an Ixion, bound to nature’s wheel. He is nature’s Lord. Hence it follows, 
secondly, that the glory which this miracle manifests is the glory of Christ 
as the Ennobler of Nature. He is not the victim of a past process. He 
- adds to the process, and the successive additions from his living energy are 


66 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


the secret of evolution ; indeed, no growth or progress is conceivable, until 
we take into account some intelligent and beneficent agent behind or within 
the process, who is reinforcing and guiding it to a preordained and rational 
end. If all growth and progress everywhere is the result of his activity, 
why should we hesitate to recognize his working here? In this miracle he 
simply shows the inner possibilities of nature, since it is under his control. 
He can subject it to the needs of man. The turning of water into wine is 
a prophecy of the transformation of this mortal body into the spiritual body, 
and of the coming of the new heaven and earth wherein dwelleth righteous- 
ness. 

For this glory is the glory of Christ, not simply as the Life of Nature, 
and as the Ennobler of Nature, but as the Interpreter of Nature. All 
Christ’s miracles were signs of something higher than themselves. This 
Fourth Gospel is especially concerned to point out the symbolism of Jesus’ 
works. He opens the eyes of the blind, to show that he is the Li-ht of 
the World; he multiplies the loaves, to show that he is the Bread of Life; 
He raises the dead, to show that he lifts men up from the death of trespasses 
and sins. The universe is moral and religious at its core. The progress is 

“a progress toward the good, the better, the best. Present commonness, 
and even imperfection, is no measure of the final result. He who made the 
world is in the world, to counteract the evil and to cherish the gocd. 
Want, the effect of sin, is to be done away. Separation and isolation, 
such as an accusing conscience brings about, are to give place to a holy 
society. Love and joy are to prevail, such love and joy as springs from 
virtue and the fear of God. All this is to begin in humble spheres and 
from them to spread through all the world. Water is but the basis and 
foundation for wine, and the world that now is is but the preparation for 
the world that is to come. 

But we cannot leave this first miracle without a further consideration 
of the philosophy of miracles in general. We must grant that the old con- 
ception of the miracle as a violation or suspension of natural law, has been 
superseded by a new conception of the miracle, as belonging to a higher 
order of nature—an order previously existing indeed, but unknown to men 
before. Miracle, then, is like the eclipse of the sun, whose rareness attracts 
attention, but is not unnatural; like the cathedral clock, whose bell rings 
only at the advent of a new century; like the action of the calculating 
machine, which presents to the observer in regular succession the series of 
units from one to ten million, but which then makes a leap and shows, not 
ten million and one, but a hundred million. The extraordinary and unique 
may nevertheless be the operation of a law of nature. The blossoming of 
the century plant is something very unlike its former flowerless condition ; 
no human being may ever have seen it blossom before; yet the provision 
therefor is in the plant from the beginning. 

The burning of the Windsor Hotel in New York City is thought to 
have been due to the gradual charring of the woodwork and to superheated 
steam pipes. The temperature rose imperceptibly, until the sudden addition 


THE MIRACLE AT CANA. 67 


of a fraction of a degree changed heat into flame. The ellipticity of the 
earth’s orbit might go on increasing by regular gradations until centrifugal 
force overbalanced the centripetal, and the earth from being a planet might 
suddenly become a comet, yet this change might be perfectly natural. 
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the 
philosophy of the ordinary scientist. Now miracle in a similar manner may 
be, and probably is, the operation of a law hitherto unknown to men, yet 
entirely within the range of natural forces, when once these natural forces 
are understood. 

I say, when once these natural forces are fully understood. But these 
natural forces are never fully understood until they are recognized as divine. 
For matter is really spirit, and nature is only another name for God. The 
laws of nature are the habits of God. It is not true that God is the author 
of the miracle only in the sense that he instituted the laws of nature at the 
beginning, and provided that, at the appropriate time, miracle should be 
their outcome. This view fails to recognize in the miracle any immediate 
exercise of will. It also regards nature as a mere machine, which can 
operate apart from God—a purely deistic method of conception. If, how- 
ever, we interpret nature dynamically, rather than mechanically, and regard 
it as the regular working of the divine will, instead of the automatic action 
of a machine, we may regard miracle as a perfectly natural phenomenon, 
while yet we see in it the action of a present and personal God. There is 
no such hard and fast line between the natural and the supernatural as 
some apologists have imagined. With the qualifications already suggested, 
we may adopt the dictum of Biedermann: ‘: Everything is miracle,—there- 
fore faith sees God everywhere; nothing is miracle,—therefore science sees 
God nowhere”. 

“The Hebrew historian or prophet regarded miracles as only the 
emergence into sensible experience of that divine force which was all along, 
though invisibly, controlling the course of nature”. So says the Bishop of 
Southampton, and he speaks wisely. This principle throws new light upon 
many difficult narratives of Scripture. Miracle is an immediate operation 
of God; but, since all natural processes are also immediate operations of 
God, we do not need to deny the use of the natural processes, so far as they 
will go, in miracle. Such wonders of the Old Testament as the overthrow of 
Sodom and Gomorrah, the partings of the Red Sea and of the Jordan, the 
calling down of fire from heaven by Elijah, and the destruction of the army 
of Sennacherib, are none the less works of God, when regarded as wrought 
by the use of natural means. At Cana Jesus took water to make wine, and 
on the hill-side of Galilee he took the five loaves to make bread, just as in 
ten thousand vineyards to-day he is turning the moisture of the earth into 
the juice of the grape, and in ten thousand fields is turning carbon into corn. 

I do not hesitate to express my belief that all miracle has its natural 
side, though we may not be able to discern it. Recent investigations show 
the possibility of influence of mind upon body which go far toward explain- 
ing many of the cures of blindness, deafness, and paralysis, which meet us 


68 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


in the gospel narrative. The virgin-birth of Christ may be an extreme 
instance of parthenogenesis, which Professor Loeb has demonstrated to 
take place in other than the lowest forms of life, and which he believes to 
be possible in all. Christ’s resurrection may be an illustration of the power 
of the normal and perfect spirit to take to itself a proper body, and so may 
be the type and prophecy of that great change when we too shall lay down 
our own life and shall take it again. The scientist will yet find that his 
disbelief is not only disbelief in Christ, but also disbelief in science. Even 
though all miracle were proved to be a working of nature, the Christian 
argument would not one whit be weakened, for still miracle would evidence 
the extraordinary working of the immanent God, who is none other than 
Jesus Christ, and the impartation of his knowledge to the prophet or apostle 
who was his instrument. 

Our unreadiness to accept this naturalistic interpretation of the miracle 
results wholly from our inveterate habit of dissociating nature from God, 
and of practically banishing God from his universe. This is the method 
of modern science, and since science deals with phenomena and not with 
their causes, science has its rights, and we cannot require it to enter a 
foreign field. But there is another field which belongs to religion, and the 
scientist is narrow and prejudiced who denies the existence of realities that 
are behind the phenomena. In his Commentary on Isaiah 33:14, George 
Adam Smith explains the passage: ‘‘Who among us can dwell with the de- 
vouring fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?” He 
tells us that the prophet had no thought of future punishment here. It was 
the present retributions of divine justice that he had in mind—those retribu- 
tions that the wicked ignore or deny. If you look at a great conflagration, 
he says, through a smoked glass, you can see the bricks falling and the 
walls collapsing, but you cannot see the fire. We may use the illustration 
for the subject before us. Physical science looks at the universe through a 
smoked glass. It sees phenomena, but not the cause of them; it sees the 
sequences of nature, but not God. There is no antagonism between its 
view and that of religion—the two are simply complements of each other. 
Faith looks at the universe without the needless intervention of a smoked 
glass. Faith sees all that science sees, but it sees also the divine agency. 
It sees not only the falling bricks, but it sees also the fire. And so it can 
recognize the natural element in the miracle, while yet it recognizes in it 
the extraordinary agency and wonder-working power of God. 

Those who see in Christ none other than the immanent God, manifested 
to creatures, find in this fact the explanation and the guarantee of his mirac- 
ulous working. The Logos or divine Reason, who is the principle of all 
growth and evolution, can make God known to finite creatures only by suc- 
cessive new impartations of his energy. Since all progress implies incre- 
ment, and Christ is the only source of life, the whole history of creation is 
a witness to the possibility of miracle. Every rational step already taken 
proves that other steps may follow. Miracle is not only possible but proba- 
ble, for the reason that Christ is the Moral Reason of the world, as well as 


THE MIRACLE AT CANA. 69 


its Intellectual Reason. The disturbances of the world-order which are due 
to sin are the matters which most deeply affect him. Christ, the life of the 
whole system and of humanity as well, must suffer; and, since we have 
evidence that he is merciful as well as just, we have the strongest of 
reasons for believing that he will rectify the evil by extraordinary means 
when merely ordinary means do not avail. 

The miracle of Cana would not have been wrought if there had not 
been need of it. It was needed as a proof that Christ is the Life of Nature, 
the Ennobler of Nature, the Interpreter of Nature. It taught that he 
recognized the needs of the world and that he had come to supply them, 
not in man’s time but in his own time, with such gradualness and in such 
proportion as best evince the wisdom and the munificence of God. He has 
come to make all things new, to make sacred every common relation of 
life, to turn earth into heaven. But he will do this through his own nat- 
ural forces and laws. Every new manifestation of his power shall lay hold 
of and build upon and develop that which already exists, even as he uses 
the water to make wine. And these transformations of the lower into the 
higher have only just begun. Cana reveals the plan of Christ as a plan of 
evolution. After Lawcomes Gospel. After labor and sorrow and pain and 
tears come rest and reward and rejoicing and life forevermore. Sin gives 
its brief enjoyments at the first, and afterwards brings remorse and ruin. 
But Christ’s gifts are ever increasing in richness and profusion. He keeps 
his best wine to the last. 

May I sum up what I have said by a definition of the miracle? A 
miracle is an event in nature so extraordinary in itself and so coinciding 
with the prophecy or command of a religious teacher or leader as fully to 
warrant the conviction, on the part of those who witness it, that God has 
wrought it with the design of certifying that this teacher or leader has been 
commissioned by him. This definition has certain marked advantages 
over those that have been commonly accepted. It recognizes the imma- 
nence of God and his immediate agency in nature, instead of assuming an 
antithesis between the laws of nature and the will of God. It regards the 
miracle as simply an extraordinary act of that same God who is already 
present in all natural operations, and who in them is revealing his general 
plan. It holds that natural law, as the method of God’s regular activity, 
in no way precludes unique exertions of his power when these will best 
secure his purpose in creation. It leaves it possible that all miracles 
may have their natural explanations and may hereafter be traced to natural 
causes, while both miracles and natural causes may be only other names for 
the one and self-same will of God. It reconciles the claims of both science 
and religion: of science, by permitting any possible or probable physical 
antecedents of the miracle; of religion, by maintaining that these very ante- 
cedents, together with the miracle itself, are to be interpreted as signs of 
God’s special commission to him under whose teaching or leadership the _ 
miracle is wrought. 

We are afflicted with a mental and moral astigmatism which sees a 


7o THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


single point or truth as if it were two. We see God and man, divine sov- 
ereignty and human freedom, Christ’s divine nature and Christ’s human 
nature, the natural and the supernatural, respectively, as two disconnected 
facts, when deeper insight would see but one. Astronomy has its centrip- 
etal and centrifugal forces, yet they are doubtless one force. The child 
cannot hold two oranges at once in its little hand. Our tendency to double 
vision should be corrected by Old Testament revelation, for that intimates 
that, in perfect consistency with the operation of natural law, the God of glory 
thundereth and in the heavens God himself is speaking with the living 
voice. The miracle of Cana is a New Testament corrective of our mental 
and moral astigmatism, for here Christ shows himself to be the Life of 
Nature, the Ennobler of Nature, the Interpreter of Nature, as only he can 
be who, as the Fourth Gospel declares, was in the beginning with God, and 
was himself God. Toa transcendent and divine Personality miracle and 
nature are one. 


* JESUS AND NICODEMUS — THE NEW BIRTH. 
(St. JOHN 3: 1-15.) 
BY REV. EDWARD ABBOTT, D. D., 


RECTOR OF ST. JAMES’s EPISCOPAL CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 


In order to a correct understanding of the story of Jesus and Nicodemus 
it is necessary to bear in mind that the Jewish commonwealth was a com- 
bination of church and state, presenting an ideal, an object lesson, of that 
coming Kingdom of God, when church and state, long separated, shall be 
united in a homogeneous whole. One and the same code of laws answered 
the purpose of both the civil and the ecclesiastical sides of the Jewish 
national life. Of almost equal authority with its written law were its 
unwritten traditions. It was one of the distinctions of the party known as 
the Pharisees that they attached the greatest importance to tradition, and 
enforced it with the utmost scrupulosity as regarded doctrine, ritual and 
life. Accompanying this academic rigor was often a practical selfishness, 
insincerity and superficiality. And Nicodemus was a Pharisee. 

Nicodemus appears only in the Gospel of St. John, and he appears in 
that Gospel only three times; once in the interview with Jesus; once when 
he protested against condemning Jesus without a trial; and once again 
when he came with Joseph of Arimathea, bearing an hundred weight of 
spices to anoint the body of the Saviour when taken from the Cross, and 
so to aid in preparing it for burial. The interview with Nicodemus alone 
concerns us this morning. 

Nicodemus was also a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. Asa rulethe 
members of the Sanhedrin were scholars of authority, theologians, teachers 
of the law; constituting a supreme court at Jerusalem before whom all 
cases arising under the law were brought for judgment. 

With this preliminary picture we are prepared to understand the scene 
about to be described, which took place at Jerusalem soon after that miracle 
in Cana of Galilee which has been the basis of discussion this morning. 
In the language of the Revised Version the brief story of the interview of 
Nicodemus with our Lord is as follows [St. John 3: 1-15]. 

In all probability the actual words of our Saviour end with the fifteenth 
verse. There follows immediately that noble epitome of the whole gospel 
of the Incarnation, ‘‘God so loved the world, that He gave His only 
begotten Son; that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life.” But in the opinion of scholars this is a direct 
declaration of the author of the gospel, pieced on to the narrative of the 
conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, and nota part of the interview 
itself. 


* Delivered at the Second Conference, held at the Mathewson Street Methodist Episcopal Church, 
November 11, 1903. 


71 


72 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Now let us for a moment pause in order to form in imagination, if pos- 
sible, a legitimate picture of the scene itself. It is in Jerusalem, at the 
crowded time of the Passover, when the streets are full of the Hebrew 
people. Itis night. Itis not improbably a windy night, and the gusts that 
sweep over Judea and Jerusalem are tearing to and fro in the streets of the 
city. Under the cover of darkness, this Nicodemus, an old man, I think, 
wends his silent and unperceived way to the house where Jesus of Nazareth 
is staying. It seems hardly probable, as has been suggested by some 
students, that it was the house of John, the author of this gospel. At the 
time of the crucifixion our Lord did commit His mother to the care of John, 
and John took her, as the King James Version says, “to his own home.” 
But the word “home” is not in the original, and it is not necessary to sup- 
pose that at this time the author of the gospel had a “‘ home” of his own in 
Jerusalem at which Jesus stayed. Whatever was the house, we can safely 
and accurately imagine that there was a stairway leading up on the outside 
of it, as was not uncommon in the houses of the East, to the upper room, 
which, as the guest chamber, would be the place where the Lord would 
be found. Nicodemus, ascending this outside stair, could reach the apart- 
ment where Jesus was without attracting the attention of the people in the 
house, so that both architecture and darkness favored the privacy of his visit. 


But why by night? There is danger that the intimations given in some 
other parts of John’s Gospel of ‘doors shut” for fear of the Jews should 
apply to this adventure, and that it should be inferred that Nicodemus 
came by night through fear. There is no authority for that interpretation, 
though it may be true. Let us not label Nicodemus with the word coward 
when there is nothing in the narrative except the simple fact that he came 
by night, to indicate that fear had anything to do with his steps. I fancy 
that if you wanted to see your pastor upon a confidential errand, you might 
very likely go to him at night when the duties and interruptions of the day 
were at their lowest ebb, and when perhaps you might be more likely to 
find him unengaged. 

At any rate, it was at night that Nicodemus went, and found the 
Saviour in the room where He was lodging. You can imagine that it did 
take something of moral courage on the part of this venerable Hebrew, 
this Pharisee, this judge upon the supreme bench, to seek a private inter- 
view with the man from Galilee, whose unique personality, whose unpar- 
alleled teachings, the beginning of whose wonder-working manifestations of 
His glory had already excited such a sensation, and aroused such a hubbub 
of excitement and discussion among the Hebrew people. It costs some- 
thing to interview a man who is under suspicion. St. Paul in his prison 
abode remembers with a grateful heart the man who is called Onesiphorus, 
because when he was a prisoner at Rome and this man was visiting there 
he had sought Paul out, and was not afraid of his bonds. Nicodemus was 
not afraid of the bonds of the Master. 

Notice also that he comes with a confession. The miracle at Cana of 
Galilee had acquired notoriety at Jerusalem; and probably other miracles 


THE NEW BIRTH. 73 


had been wrought not here recorded. Evidently Nicodemus does not 
stand alone in his confession, for he says: ‘‘ We know that thou art a teacher 
come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except 
God be with him”. It was a joint confession in which he spoke for others 
as well as for himself. It was also a compromised confession, a limited 
confession, a confession with reservations. All that it said was, ‘“‘we know 
that Thou art a teacher’’; yet that was a good deal for a member of the 
Sanhedrin to say. ‘‘We know that Thou art a teacher come from God”, 
was a great deal more for a man in his position to say. 


Now the Saviour, instead of meeting this confession as most persons 
would have met it, met it as He often met such; gives no attention appar- 
ently to the question or remark that had been addressed to Him by His 
interlocutor, but deftly and effectively turns the mind of His interlocutor to 
an entirely different point. Here comes a venerable Hebrew, a Pharisee, a 
judge on the supreme bench, but by the Saviour all he says is brushed aside 
with the words, ‘‘ Except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdom 
of God’”’. With one stroke He puts Nicodemus outside the pale. 


Then comes the question, ‘‘ How can a man be born again?” Itis like 
Pilate’s question, ‘‘ What is truth?”’ It may have been ironical, sarcastic, 
contemptuous or sincere, or a little of each and all. “‘Howcan aman be 
born when he is old?”” How can aman be born again when he is an old 
man like me, stooped, grey-headed, and trembling of foot, as I have found 
my way up these stairs? The Saviour seems to pay no attention to this 
question, for in His second declaration He passes right by it and fixes His 
mind and words upon a spot beyond the place, even, where He had planted 
His foot in His first answer. ‘‘ Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man 
be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot ezfer into the Kingdom of 
God”, 

Put these two answers side by side and note the progress in the 
Saviour’s thought from the one to the other. In one case it is, ‘“‘ Except a 
man be born [from above] he cannot see the Kingdom of God”; in the 
other it is, “‘ Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot eter 
into the Kingdom of God”. Spiritual perception is one thing, spiritual 
experience is another. Unless a man be born from above [of the Spirit], and 
of water as well, he can neither see, through his perceptions, what the King- 
dom of God is, nor in his experience can he know or enter into the Kingdom 
of God as a real condition of his life. 


Now, what does our Saviour mean by the distinction that He draws 
here between baptism of the Spirit and baptism with water? What does 
He mean by “ being born of water and the Spirit”? I know that this is an 
interdenominational meeting. I am probably speaking to those who call 
themselves Baptists or Methodists or Congregationalists or Episcopalians. 
I hope nothing I say will exceed the courtesy that a speaker should show in 
such an assembly as this, or that it will offend or wound or distress the sen- 
sibilities of any brother or sister who does me the honor to listen to what I 
have to say. ButI want to say here unequivocally, unhesitatingly, and with- 


74 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


out the slightest room for doubt in regard to my meaning, that I believe in 
baptismal regeneration. Baptism is a covenant between God and the human 
soul. There is a human side to it, and there is a divine side to it, and the 
divine and the human must coincide to make the perfect baptism, which is 
the outward and visible sign of the inward and invisible birth. That is 
baptism ; and what is baptism? It is an outward and visible application of 
a medium appointed by our Lord Himself, accompanying an inward and 
invisible operation of the divine spirit promised by God Himself. That is 
baptism, and such baptism is not only an indication, it is a means, when it 
is used in faith, of the new birth. Those who have conformed to the out- 
ward and visible sign have a right to expect the inward and invisible grace, 
and that is the literal and spiritual philosophy of that being born of the 
Spirit and of water which our Saviour lays down to Nicodemus as the pre- 
liminary condition not only of seeing but entering into the Kingdom of 
God. 


There are three foundation doctrines in so much of the Gospel of John 
as this Conference has proceeded with in its consideration this morning. 
The first is the Incarnation, God manifest in the flesh, and the world will 
never outgrow the doctrine of the incarnation. Men deride it, and dispute 
it, and condemn it, and forsake it, but it is of the nature of the universe. 
The second is the Atonement. On the foundation of the Incarnation rises 
the second great doctrine of the Gospel of John. ‘ Behold the Lamb of 
God which taketh away the sin of the world”. The doctrine may be 
repudiated, minimized and rejected, but there will ever remain the sacri- 
ficial atonement of the Son of God for the sin of the world. And the next 
great doctrine in this spiritual ascent is that of the new birth. It hasa 
logical connection with the others, it grows out of the others, it is essential 
for the realization of the others. God manifest in Jesus Christ, the sacri- 
ficial Lamb of Calvary, and the new birth from above by the Spirit, with an 
outward sign of the washing of regeneration by which the soul is restored 
to the kingdom to which by sin it had been lost. Those are the three 
fundamental doctrines of St. John’s Gospel. 


There are four courses to take with certain difficult passages in the 
gospels of which we have examples before us in our study to-day: ‘ Except 
a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God”; “ Except a man 
be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God”. 
We can say, ‘‘I do not believe Jesus Christ ever said such a thing”; “that 
saying is a fiction; it sprang up in the mind of a deluded enthusiast fifty 
years after the Saviour had come and gone’”’. A great many people do dis- 
pose of such sayings in that way; it is a very easy way to dispose of them; 
yet for one, I do not feel at liberty to take refuge in that method. The 
second course is to say: ‘ Yes, the narrative is authentic, our Saviour said 
what He was reported to have said, but He was mistaken. He was honest, 
sincere, but acting under an hallucination, as other men often do”. Well, 
there are those who comfort themselves with such a refuge as that; but I 
reject it, for I do not believe our Lord was a mistaken man. The third 


THE NEW BIRTH. 75 


course is to admit that our Saviour said what He was reported to have said, 
and that He was perfectly sane, but that He was an imposter, a quack, a 
mountebank, a pretender who traded on the fears and superstitions of an 
ignorant and half-barbaric people, knowing all the time that He was making 
pretentions which had no foundation. There are those who accept that 
explanation, but I reject it. There remains only one other course open. 
Our Saviour said precisely what He is reported to have said; He was a 
sane man; He wasan honest man, and He is tobe believed. My character 
and my life are to be conformed to His teaching, and if I fail to doit, I must 
take the consequences. That method of disposing of these difficult passages 
I heartily accept. 


*ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH BELIEF. 
(St. JOHN 3:14-21.) 
BY REV. ALBERT H. PLUMB, D. D., 


PASTOR OF THE WALNUT AVENUE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, BosTON, MAss. 


In studying the Gospel of John we find the teaching that eternal life 
comes through belief. We are led therefore, to examine the statements of 
this Gospel in regard to three inquiries : . 

First. What is eternal life? 

Second. What is the belief, or the believing, through which eternal 
life comes ? 

Third. Why eternal life comes through belief? 

It seems requisite, moreover, that some considerations should be pre- 
sented with a view to clear these teachings of this Gospel from misappre- 
hension and objection, and to show their reasonableness and importance. 

I. What is eternal life? : 

1. Eternal life is that blessed condition of existence of the soul of man 
in its relation to God, which is set forth in contrast with another condition 
in which the soul is described as abiding under the wrath of God, abiding 
in darkness, and which involves such loss of good that the soul, though 
immortal, is said to perish. ‘As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilder- 
ness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth 
in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:14,15). “He 
that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not 
the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (3: 36). 
“Tam come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on Me should 
not abide in darkness” (12:46). 

2. Eternal life is a certain kind of practical and affectionate acquaint- 
ance with God the Father, and His Son Jesus Christ, which men may have 
through the aid of the Holy Spirit. ‘This is life eternal, that they might 
know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou has sent” 
(17:3). ‘Except a man be born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter 
into the Kingdom of God” (3:5). 

3. Eternal life is that happy relationship with God which men may 
have as a gift from Christ which He came into the world to impart. ‘“ My 
sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me: and I give 
unto them eternal life’ (10:27, 28). ‘‘Father, glorify Thy Son that Thy 
Son also may glorify Thee, as Thou has given Him power over all flesh, that 
He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him” (17:1, 2). 
““T am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more 
abundantly ”’ (10: 10). 


* Delivered at the Second Conference, held at the Mathewson Street Methodist Episcopal Church, 
November 11, 1903. 


76 


ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH BELIEF. 77 


4. Eternal life is that precious relationship with God which men may 
have as a present possession. ‘‘ He that believeth on the Son hath ever- 
lasting life” (3:36). ‘‘ Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My 
word, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall 
not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (5 : 24). 

5. Eternal life is that glorious relationship with God which men may 
have as an inalienable possession. “I give unto them eternal life, and they 
shall never perish, neither shall anyone pluck them out of My hand” 
(10:28). 

II. What is the belief,— the believing,— through which eternal: life 
comes ? 3 

It is that act of the individual soul by which it recognizes and honors 
the claims of Christ, accepts and confides in His offices as the One sent by 
God to give eternal life to all who thus entrust themselves to His care. 
Thus the phrase, ‘‘ believing in Christ” is used as synonymous with receiv- 
ing Christ as the One by whom we, who have rebelled against God, may be 
reinstated in filial relations to Him. ‘‘To as many as received Him, to 
them gave He power, (or the right) to become the sons of God, even to 
them that believe on His name”? (1: 12). 

Again the phrase is used as meaning the same as obeying Christ. ‘‘ He 
that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, but he that obeyeth not the 
Son (revised version) shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on 
him” (3 : 36). 

So Martha recognized the claim of Jesus as the Christ, the anointed 
deliverer, and said to Him: “ Yea, Lord, I believe that Thou art the Christ, 
the Son of God, which should come into the world” (11:27). To the 
Samaritan woman her townsmen said: ‘‘ Now we believe, not because of 
thy saying, for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed 
the Christ, the Saviour of the world” (John 4:42). 

These teachings are well paraphrased in that admirable definition of 
believing in Christ, by the late Dr. Joseph Cook: “Saving faith is the 
affectionate choice of Jesus Christ as both Saviour and Lord”. This 
implies a penitential confession that as sinners we need Him as a Saviour, 
and that as subjects we bow to His righteous rule, and engage to obey His 
commands. 

III. The third inquiry, why eternal life comes through believing, has 
its answer in the statements made in this Gospel concerning the merciful 
mission of Christ. Since ‘‘ God so loved the world that He gave His only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life ’’ (3: 16), it follows that the first, most manifest and urgent 
duty for all who know this is to receive and welcome, accept and trust the 
Saviour whom God sent into the world “ that the world through Him might 
be saved” (3:17). So when men inquired of Jesus, What shall we do 
that we might work the works of God, He answered: ‘ This is the work of 
God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent” (6:28, 29). The 
Saviour taught that men had such evidence of His divine mission in His 
life-giving words, and in His miraculous deeds, that not to believe on Him 


78 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


showed them to be ungrateful and perverse. ‘The words that I speak unto 
you, they are spirit and they are life” (6:63). ‘If I had not come and 
spoken unto them, they had not had sin, but now they have no cloak for 
their sin. If I had not done among them the works that none other man 
did, they had not had sin, but now they have both seen and hated both Me 
and My Father” (15:22-24). ‘“‘Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to 
whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have be- 
lieved and know that Thou art the Holy One of God” (6:68, 69). On 
another occasion as recorded by Matthew, Simon Peter answered and said, 
“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and 
said unto him, blessed art thou, Simon, Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood 
hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 
16:16, 17). 

IV. Having thus set forth the plain teachings of this Gospel on eternal 
life through belief, or believing, it seems proper, in view of the frequent 
misapprehensions concerning these teachings, and the numerous objections 
to them, to add some remarks to show their reasonableness and importance. 


1. God’s great love and mercy are specially apparent in His giving us 
eternal life on such an easy and simple condition. We are simply to tum 
away from everything wrong, and in loving trust look to the Saviour God 
has provided, and try to follow Him. We are not now “under the law, but 
under grace” (Rom. 6:14); z. ¢., we are not under the law as a rule of judg- 
ment, although we are still under the law as a rule of action. God has not 
repealed His law, which is ‘holy, just and good’”’, and as His ‘‘ command- 
ment is exceeding broad”’, ‘“‘ by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justi- 
fied in His sight”? (Rom. 4:20). But, since Christ has died and ‘ borne 
our sins in His own body on the tree”’ (1 Pet. 2:24), God is enabled to 
exercise His infinite compassion towards us, and to accept from us, instead 
of the perfect obedience which the law demands, an imperfect degree of 
obedience, if it is of the right kind; if it is that humble, penitent, loving 
spirit, which is implied in the act of entrusting our souls to Christ, as our 
Advocate and Redeemer. 


Many years ago, when a certain brilliant young philanthropist was in 
charge of the New York Independent, he wrote an editorial inveighing 
against creeds, declaring it very immaterial what a man believes if he only 
lives right. ‘There is one simple way of salvation’’, he said: ‘‘ Let a man 
live according to the Sermon on the Mount and he will be saved”. ‘So 
he will,’ the clear-seeing president of a western college responded in a con- 
clusive reply; ‘but no man ever yet lived up to that standard, which 
says: ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is 
perfect’. And if that is the rule of judgment every soul of man is forever 
cut off from all hope of salvation”’. 


2. To condition eternal life on belief, or believing, furnishes one of 
the best tests of character. Belief means, in this connection, as we have 
seen, not the things believed apart by themselves, but the act of the person 
believing, and that act of believing, which is a requisite for eternal life, is 


ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH BELIEF. 79 


always a moral act, an affectionate choice of Jesus Christ as both Saviour 
and Lord. ~ 

This is not as some allege, making eternal life depend on a merely 
intellectual assent to the truth of a certain set of theological propositions, 
even about the person and work of Christ; a kind of an assent which may 
have no decisive connection with character. I may be compelled to 
believe in the newly discovered properties of matter, the wonderful powers 
of certain substances as sources of light and heat. But this belief does not 
seem at present to have any direct bearing on my conduct or to appeal to 
me for any specific action. 

Some objectors speak as if we teach that certain beliefs held in 
the understanding act as a talisman; as if one who has the catechism in 
his mind is thereby qualified to enter into life. A parent applies to the 
school authorities and gets a permit for his child to enter the public school. 
With this in his hand the child secures an entrance, though he knows little 
of the terms of admission, perhaps cannot read the permit. A good creed 
in a man’s head does not give him entrance into life. It does not neces- 
sarily make him a good man or give him aright character. It tends to do 
so, for all truth has an inherent impelling power. ‘With the heart man 
believeth unto righteousness” (Rom.1o0:10). The question of intellectual 
assent to the creed depends on the evidence presented. If the evidence is 
sufficient, assent is compelled. It is not optional with a man to believe it 
or not. Hecannot help it. ‘‘The devils also believe and tremble” (James 
2:19). The question is, does he yield to the constraining force of that 
truth upon his affections and his will? Does he accept it as the rule of his 
own life, and govern himself accordingly ? 

Now, when Christ bids us believe in Him, if His claims are clearly 
seen and we are convinced that He is what He says He is, the appeal He 
makes for our confidence, our loving trust, is the most powerful appeal 
possible. For God in Christ is the supreme revelation of the divine char- 
acter. ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”’ 
(John 3:16). ‘Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved 
us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). 
Tf one is willing to do right he will gladly respond to this appeal. by accept- 
ing Christ and confiding all his interests to His loving care. 

3. To require belief as a condition of receiving eternal life is reason- 
able, because the essential element in the believing required is only the love 
due from every sincere soul to the highest excellence known. . 

It is only in so far as Christ is revealed to us in His true character that we 
are required to believe in Him. Some years ago I was present at a sym- 
posium on ‘The Meeting of the Extremes’’, in the parlors of the late Rev. 
Dr. Joseph Cook, when a distinguished philanthropist, who rejects the 
Christian system, said: ‘You call us unbelievers, when in fact we believe 
more than you do”. He named a number of things concerning the capa- 
bilities and prospects of the soul of man which are not included in the 
Christian belief. The reply was made, that it is not the number of propo- 


80 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


sitions believed that entitles one to be called a believer by way of eminence, 
but the dignity of the propositions, and the directness and power of their 
bearing on the practical issues of life. 

And when we consider it, could there be a proposition submitted to the 
apprehension of man for his belief more commanding, or more potent for 
good if true, than the statement that He from whose creative hand the 
planets rolled, in the day “‘when the morning stars sang together, and all 
the sons of God shouted for joy ”’, stooped so low as here on this atom of a 
world to be born a babe and lie in the arms of a human mother, to be nailed 
to the cross in expiation for the sins of the world, to rise from the dead and 
bid His followers go forth and disciple all nations, saying: ‘ All power is 
given unto Me in heaven and in earth, and lo, I am with you always, even 
unto the end of the world”’; and that He will then sit on His judgment throne 
and before Him shall be gathered all nations to receive from His hands the 
final awards for the things done in the body. The person who believes that, 
and joyfully throws all his interests for time and eternity into the keeping of 
this Almighty Redeemer, all history has persisted in calling preeminently 
a believer, and is warranted in doing so. Indeed, our Lord himself bestows 
this title on His disciples, referring to them again and again, by a tender 
diminutive, expressive of endearment, as “these little ones that believe in 
Me" 

But the objector further said, ‘‘ We are not to be blamed for rejecting 
this belief. We simply have no capacity for entertaining it”. He illus- 
trated their incapacity by the replies two little children playing on their 
father’s lawn said they gave to a tramp who demanded their money. One 
said, ‘‘We haven’t any”. The other added: ‘‘ We haven’t any pockets”. 

In response to this, reference was made to the fishes in the waters of 
Mammoth Cave that had so long kept away from the light that their eyelids 
are said to have grown together, and to the conceded fact that many a high 
faculty of the soul can be ina measure extirpated by disuse, as the great 
naturalist Mr. Darwin deplored his perception of spiritual values had been, 
to a lamentable degree. 

There is also such a thing as ‘‘an evil heart of unbelief in departing 
from the living God” (Heb. 3:12). We have a natural disinclination to 
receive evidence that is likely to convict us of sin. The Saviour said: “ He 
that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in 
the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, 
that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, 
because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the 
light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved”’ (John 
3:18-20). But whether by culpable negligence of evidence or not, it was 
manifest that the eminent doubter did not perceive the true relation to the 
world that Christ claims to hold. For he said: “I should never think of 
ending a prayer, ‘for Plato’s sake, amen’; nor ‘for Emerson’s sake’, nor 
can I say ‘for Jesus’ sake, amen’”. The Christian can say this, for he 
recognizes the offices of Christ as revealed to him in the Bible, and the 
Holy Spirit has so helped him to see Christ in these relations that he rests 


ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH BELIEF. 81 


his soul upon Him. This is in accordance with the promise Christ made, 
‘“When He, the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you into all truth. 
He shall glorify Me, for He shall receive of mine and shall show it unto 
you” (John 16:13,14). The believer reads: ‘‘ There is one God and one 
mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave Himself 
aransom forall” (1 Tim. 2:5,6). ‘‘If any man sin we have an Advocate 
with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous; and He is the propitiation for 
our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world” 
(1 John 2:1, 2). Those whom Christ condemned for refusing to believe on 
Him were those to whom He had spoken and before whom He had proved 
His claims by doing ‘“‘among them the works which none other man did”’, 
so that He could say: ‘‘ Now they have no cloak for their sin” (John 15: 
22-24). 

Seeing Christ, perceiving His righteous claims to our loving confidence, 
of course must come before believing in Christ, before giving Him our 
loving confidence. ‘This is the will of Him that sent Me”’, said Jesus, 
“that everyone that seeth the Son and believeth on Him, should have 
eternal life, and I will raise Him up at the last day”’ (John 6:40). Yet we 
are taught that “‘in every nation he that feareth God and worketh right- 
eousness is acceptable to Him” (Acts 10:35). We read: ‘There is one 
Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5). One Lord whose atoning 
death alone makes it possible for the penitent to be forgiven. Jesus said, 
‘“‘T am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but 
by Me” (John 14:6). The apostle Peter, “filled with the Holy Ghost”, 
said of Christ, ‘‘ Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none 
other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” 
(Acts 4:12). ‘‘ There is one faith”, one simple act of loving, penitent, self- 
surrender to the best light the soul has, the same in essence in ancient saint 
and Christian Apostle, in Enoch and in John. Faith in God is love for 
God as trustworthy, “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13: ro). 
“An atheist may be saved’’, Professor Park used to say, “‘if he is honest 
in his doubt, and sincerely follows the best light he can get”. Who can 
doubt that Socrates would have joyfully accepted Christ if the world’s 
Redeemer had been revealed to him? ‘‘ There is one baptism ”’, one orderly 
required way of confessing Christ when one has seen Him and believed on 
Him. “All power is given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye, there- 
fore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of 
the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe 
all things whatsoever I commanded you; and lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world”’ (Matt. 28 : 18-20). 

The words of Professor Robert Flint of Edinboro are pertinent here. 
“Tn religion, as in every other department of thought and life, man is bound 
to regulate his belief by the simple but comprehensive principle that evi- 
dence is the measure of assent. Disbelief ought to be regulated by the 
same principle, for disbelief is belief; not the opposite of belief, but belief 
of the opposite. Unbelief is the opposite both of belief and disbelief. 
Ignorance is to unbelief what knowledge is to belief or disbelief. "The whole 


82 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


duty of man as to belief is to believe and disbelieve according to evidence, 
and neither to believe nor disbelieve when the evidence fails him”. 
(Theism, p. 358). 

With this agrees the statement of Archbishop Whately: “ Disbeliev- 
ing is believing, since to disbelieve any assertion is to believe its contradic- 
tory”. 

4. To insist on religious belief as a condition of eternal life is really 
to insist on religious life, since religious life is the response of the soul to 
the appeal of religious truth. 

The familiar voice of a weak sciolism cries out, ‘‘No matter about a 
man’s belief, religious life is the real need”; as if the latter could be had 
without the former; as if the latter were not always produced and deter- 
mined by the former. All truth is related to life. Strictly, there is no abstract 
truth. Every conception of realities has an inherent impelling power. The 
voice of the multiplication table tells us of the harmonies of God’s universe, 
with which it behooves us to be in accord. We look on the good Samaritan, 
and the scene says, ‘‘Go, and do thou likewise”. “ Religion’, Professor 
Flint says, “is man’s belief in a being or beings mightier than himself, 
and inaccessible to his senses, but not indifferent to his sentiments and 
actions, together with the feelings and practices which flow from such be- 
lief”. (Anti-Theistic Theories, p. 259.) Hence the belief is the governing 
constituent in all religion, indeed in all character. A man is always what 
he is made by his belief, not always by what he says he holds, but by what 
his life says holds him, the principles and doctrines which he accepts as 
his rule of action and which govern his life. In practical affairs men 
acknowledge this. A man can’t get a situation as a clerk in a store without 
an examination of his theological belief, if it is thought to be peculiar. A 
merchant says toa friend: ‘Do you know of a competent salesman I can 
get?” “Yes”, the friend replies, “the brightest, most successful one I 
ever knew”. ‘Send him round will you?” ‘“ Yes, only I ought to tell you 
his religious views are rather peculiar’. ‘What has that to do with the 
matter?” ‘Well, he believes in the community of goods, that God’s plan 
is for all property ultimately to be held in common; meanwhile, if one does 
not get his fair share he has a right to help himself’. ‘Then I don’t want 
him around my till’, the merchant rejoins. 

The genesis of religion is always the same: First, religious knowl- 
edge; secondly, religious feeling, awakened by the appeal of the truth that 
is seen; thirdly, religious action, or the choice to yield to the appeal of the 
truth, or to resist it. The virtue lies in the action of the will; that is always 
accompanied by emotion, but the sensibility and the will are both abso- 
lutely dependent on the conception of the truth by the intellect. 

5. To regard belief or believing as a requisite for eternal life is a safer 
rule than to consider religious feeling as the clear sign of true religion, for 
unless religious feeling accords with correct views of truth, it is liable to be 
misleading, and indeed to be wholly wrong itself. There is no religion 
without emotion, but emotion is not religion. It must be regulated by a 
clear vision of the facts of the situation. Thus Professor Flint remarks: 


ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH BELIEF. 83 


“The heart must be appealed to and satisfied as well as the head, but not 
apart from or otherwise than through the head, or the appeal is sophistical 
and the satisfaction illegitimate. Our feelings largely determine whether 
we recognize and assent to reasons or not, but they ought not to be substi- 
tuted for reasons, or even used to supplement reasons”. He condemns 
“the sentimentalism which pleads feelings in deprecation of the rigid criti- 
cism of reasons, or in order to retain a conviction which it cannot logically 
justify’. (Theism, p. 334). 

Men often go wofully astray because they yield to the impulse of wrong 
feelings—feelings awakened by the lower instincts, or by a selfish and par- 
tial view of facts, while they shut their eyes to unwelcome truth, lest its 
stronger appeal should prove effectual. 

A man is passionately enamored of a lady whom he desires to marry, 
but before he can make her acquaintance they are widely separated. Years 
pass, when they chance to meet. Suddenly the former impulse is upon him 
like a whirlwind. Learning immediately, however, that she is now married, 
instantly, as an honorable man, he stifles the feeling, obeying rather the 
impulses awakened by this wider knowledge of the facts of the case. 

A man says: ‘‘Some of the sayings of Jesus awaken repugnant feelings 
in my mind. I feel that they cannot be true”. He is reminded that by 
many infallible proofs Jesus is accredited at the bar of our reason as a 
trustworthy witness, the light of the world, the truth. This fact, and the 
remembrance of our imperfect knowledge, our liability to prejudice under 
the blinding influence of our sin, and our natural aversion to admonitory 
truth, are considerations which appeal to him to yield a reverent acceptance 
to all the teachings of our Lord. 

Those who regard their own feelings as a safe guide, notwithstanding 
the appeal to the contrary of attested truth, in rejecting certain parts of 
Christ’s teaching as untrue, do not agree with each other what parts their 
feelings will allow to stand. Every man is to install his own feelings as the 
supreme authority in deciding what portions of the Word of God he will 
accept, what portions ‘find him”, as he says, or approve themselves to his 
moral sensibilities. Thus the author of Zhe Christ of Today says (p. 161): 
‘“‘The man who is full of the mind of Christ is dependent on no authority to 
declare to him the portions of his Bible that are truly the revelation of God: 
he has an unction from the Holy One, and understands for himself”’. 

Some years ago an effort was made at a misnamed Church Congress at 
Hartford, to ascertain what parts of the Bible the feelings of certain liberal 
thinkers would agree in commending as worthy of belief. Paul’s teaching 
they felt could be disregarded, but their feelings seemed hopelessly at 
variance on the question how much of Christ’s teachings could safely be 
trusted. At length an eminent clergyman ended the discussion by stating 
that we must all become like the little child that Jesus set in the midst of 
His disciples and commended, for a child does not pretend to know any- 
thing about these mysteries. On their plan he was right; they were agnos- 
tics all, with as many Bibles as there were men, and none of them worth 
anything as a pillow for a dying bed. 


84 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


6. To insist on religious belief as a pre-requisite to eternal life is pre- 
cisely what is implied in the injunction to disciple all nations. 

Ali the extensive operations of the various missionary societies for the 
prevalence of God’s Kingdom over all the earth are simply an endeavor to 
carry to every man, everywhere, the message which the great missionary 
apostle gave to the Philippian jailer: ‘‘ Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31). And all the efforts to produce 
more harmonious and efficient religious activities at home and abroad in 
bringing the world to Christ, can successfully proceed only on the principle 
that there must first be secured greater harmony of conviction in regard to 
the underlying truths involved. What precisely is the task to be done? 

At a farewell meeting on the departure of a missionary sent by one of 
the liberal denominations to Japan, the distinct declaration was made: 
“We are not going out to convert the Japanese, but to confer with them, to 
promote an interchange of religious ideas’. And upon this apostle of 
spiritual trading an educated native of that country, one of the speakers of 
the occasion, invoked the blessing of the eighty thousand gods of Japan. 

At the meeting of the Second International Congregational Council in 
Boston in 1899, a distinguished guest, the head of Cambridge University, 
in discussing Christian unity and fellowship, attempted to show that the 
only union possible is ‘‘a moral unity, a unity of spirit, which is completely 
independent of creed’’. I am compelled to take issue squarely with that 
assertion, and to affirm, on the contrary, that there isno moral unity or 
unity of spirit possible except that which is founded on, and bounded by, 
an underlying unity of creed. The measure of harmony of spiritual life 
between persons and parties is absolutely and always determined by the 
measure of harmony in their creed. The gentleman further said that the 
ground of unity is a recognition of ‘‘ the Christlike conduct of life”. Indeed ? 
And what is that? Mr. Gladstone, in his paper on Authority in Religion 
says, ‘‘The human mind is accustomed to play tricks with itself in every 
form, and one of the forms in which it most frequently resorts to this opera- 
tion is when it attenuates the labor of thought, and evades the responsibility 
of definite decision, by the adoption of a general word that we purposely 
keep undefined to our own consciousness”. ‘ So”, he says, ‘‘men admire 
the British constitution, without knowing or inquiring what it is, and profess 
Christianity but decline to say or think what it means”’. 

Now to define ‘‘the Christlike conduct of life’, so that it can serve as 
an intelligible basis for Christian unity, one must have some knowledge of 
Christ, and of the application of His teaching to our life. Such knowledge 
to be effective must be apprehended with some clearness, and if thus appre- 
hended, it can be stated, and if stated it is a creed, and that creed governs 
the feelings and acts of the man who makes it his rule of life. The propa- 
gation of the Gospel does not imply that perfect agreement in all minor 
matters of belief is the end sought, but a substantial agreement in its essen- 
tial truths. The great London preacher, the late Joseph Parker, once 
unfortunately said: ‘In the case of two men, two hundred, two thousand, 
two million, unity in mere opinion is not a miracle but an impossibility”’. 


ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH BELIEF. 85 


Yet millions upon millions passionately sing: ‘All hail the power of Jesus’ 
name”’, and that shows they are cordially united in the opinions that He is 
Lord, and that sinners should ‘‘crown Him Lord of all”. When Mr. Parker 
adds: ‘‘Opinion is necessarily and happily changeable’’, his confusion 
arises from spelling opinion with a capital O ; for we must ask, What opinion? 
The opinion that there is a holy God, that man is a sinner, and that they 
must be reconciled to abide in peace together, are necessarily and happily 
unchangeable among Christians. 

On the occasion referred to, President Eliot said: ‘‘Opinions and 
beliefs vary more and more, as knowledge advances and freedom grows ”’. 
Nay, nay; for who was it who bade us “‘disciple all nations”? When He 
ascended on high and gave gifts unto men, why did He give “‘some to be 
apostles, and prophets, and evangelists, and pastors, and teachers’? 
Was it not ‘‘ for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the 
edifying of the body of Christ, until we all come into the unity of the faith, 
and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the 
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ?” 

7. To insist on belief as the condition of eternal life is the only way to 
produce strong characters, men of power in promoting the Kingdom of 
God. It has been a favorite plea of some that one cannot justly be required 
to believe any definite system of truth, because nothing of that kind is 
attainable. Christianity is casting aside its old forms, which, though false, 
were useful once, and putting on what is true to us now, but must in time be 
cast aside hereafter, for Christianity has no system of doctrine and never 
can have. Thus Stopford Brooke, in his volume on Christ in Modern Life, 
says: ‘‘Christ’s religion never can be made into a system”’, and he remarks 
of nis faith, ‘‘it holds all opinions and theories slightly, being ready to sur- 
render them for higher truth”. Buta religious teacher who comes to his 
hearers saying: ‘“‘As at present advised the case is thus and so, but I am 
pursuing my investigations, and I will keep you informed of my researches 
and of my doubts as well,” is like a man standing on the quivering crust of 
a bog, shifting his footing all the time. He is in no condition to lift any- 
thing, or to strike an earnest blow, or to do anything but sink in the mire 
and drag others down with him. Forty-eight years ago, here in Brown 
University, Professor Lincoln gave me as my theme for a college oration, 
“Faith an Element of Eloquence”, and he held. up before me as a type of 
the men of power in all history the great apostle who said: ‘‘ We believe 
and therefore speak”’. The Saviour prayed: “Sanctify them through Thy 
truth, Thy word is truth”? (John 17:17), and the men who have made the 
world better have been men who have held the truth, and taught the truth 
as that on which the eternal life of the soul depends. 

8. To insist on religious belief as a condition of eternal life greatly 
enhances our view of the importance of a full and clear presentation of the 
truth, and thus points out the chief difference between Christianity and the 
ethnic religions, a distinction wherein lies its superior power. 

Max Miller, in his study of comparative religions, reaches the conclu- 
sion that there is some good in all religions, enough to save a man, if: he 


86 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


will follow the best light he has. These religions may lead men to repent, 
but none of them show how God can safely forgive them if they repent. 
That, the Christian religion alone reveals, and in that “ piece of informa- 
tion” is the hiding of its power. “Christ, Christ crucified, is the wisdom 
and power of God” (1 Cor. 1:23, 24). Mr. Gladstone described the 
Christian religion as consisting not only of certain sacraments enshrining 
its leading and distinctive facts, and of a peculiar and superior system of 
morals, but also of a body of doctrine, whose center is the person and work 
of Christ. It is the lack of these characteristic truths of redemption which 
explains the comparative powerlessness of all other religions. Wendell 
Phillips said, ‘‘ The answer to Confucianism is China, to Buddhism is India, 
to Mohammedanism is Turkey’’. Christianity is supplanting all other relig- 
ions precisely because it alone is continually crying to all: “ Behold the 
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world ” (John 1:29). 

Allow me a personal allusion as I close. At family worship yesterday 
morning Mrs. Plumb reminded me that on the tenth of November, just 
forty-five years ago yesterday, I was ordained to the Christian ministry, and 
she accepted the position she has since held to my great satisfaction as my 
helper in my work. It was a precious recollection, and it recalled the fact 
that it was the voice of a Providence pastor, the saintly and sainted Dr. 
Leonard Swain, of the Central Church here, which then gave me the solemn 
charge to be faithful to my high calling. As we reviewed the past, it 
seemed to us that the one thing which has grown most upon our thoughts is 
the greatness of the love of Him who said: “ He that believeth on the Son 
hath everlasting life’ (John 3 : 36). 

I was at a ministerial gathering lately where a prominent clergyman, in 
reading a paper, quoted a passage from the Gospel of John, and paused to 
say he was aware that this Gospel is not considered authentic, but in 
this case John agrees with the other Gospels, and so he ventured to quote 
him. Think of it! Apologizing for quoting from this Gospel, which has 
been called the heart of Christ! Such is not the spirit of this Conference. 
_ I sometimes ask the children in the Sunday School who is the happiest 
man in the Bible? They know who is the strongest, the meekest, the 
oldest man. Can there be any question that the beloved disciple, who 
knew more of the heart of Christ than anyone else, who reclined at the last 
supper on the bosom of his Lord, was the most favored, the happiest man 
that ever breathed? And yet he said: ‘‘ Greater joy have I none than 
this, to hear of my children walking in the truth” (3 John v. 4). In that 
joy, you, beloved brethren of this Conference, who have been here engaged 
in exalting the teaching of this holy apostle, will be permitted, through the 
happy results of your labors, to share. For these Conferences will assuredly 
result in securing in not a few cases, the object for which the apostle de- 
clares the Gospel was written. “And many other signs truly did Jesus 
which are not written in this book, but these are written that ye might be- 
lieve that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might 
have life through His name” (John 20: 30, 31). 


* THE OPTIMISM OF JESUS. 
(ST. JOHN 4: 1-42.) 
BY REV. FRANK J. GOODWIN, 


PASTOR OF THE PAWTUCKET CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, PAWTUCKET, R. I. 


The fourth chapter of St. John reveals, as do few chapters of the New 
Testament, the optimism of Jesus. This optimism manifests itself in Christ 
as a soul winner, as a practical worker, and as a teacher. 

I. Zhe Optimism of Christ as a soul winner. Christ chose on two 
occasions a Samaritan to teach His greatest lessons; it was a Samaritan in 
the parable of true humanity which He selected to illustrate the spirit of 
brotherhood which the Jewish priest and Levite failed to express; it was to 
a Samaritan woman, a heretic in religion, a profligate in life, the most un- 
promising person possible to receive His message, that Christ promised the 
water of eternal life which should spring up forever in the soul. He came 
to be the Saviour of the world and He guaranteed to save to the uttermost. 
He came to call not the strong, the spiritually acute, the morally blameless, 
but the weak, the spiritually blind, the publican, the sinner and the outcast. 
He did not flinch at the hardest problem; serene and hopeful, He brought 
the blessings of His truth to the most lowly and the most sinful. His 
optimism was apparent in His belief that every man, however ‘spiritually 
impoverished, cow/d have and shou/d have a religious experience, a personal 
appreciation and appropriation of the Gospel of the blessed God. Christ 
did not come to found a religion ; the world was filled with religions, some 
dark and full of error, some bright and glistening with truth. Christ came 
to bring religious fe to men. He was the last and greatest of the prophets 
of Israel who stood for justice, mercy, and the humble walk with God, in 
distinction from external obedience to forms and ceremonies, and the 
observance of fasts and feasts. Christianity is pure democracy. It assumes 
that men can and will, if properly inspired and instructed, bring their lives 
under the sway of religious ideals, laws, beatitudes. We sometimes ask 
the question whether political democracy is a failure, whether the history of 
republics bears out the expectations of great commoners that man is adapted 
to self-government. The optimist in politics is compelled to assert his 
faith in the face of many ugly facts which testify to man’s indifference to 
his political rights and neglect of his civic duties. ‘How long will the 
American Union last?” said Guizot to James Russell Lowell. ‘It will 
exist’’, was the reply, ‘‘so long as the men of America hold to the funda 
mental principles of their fathers”. That is all that the patriot can say 
and forthwith he proceeds to lift up his voice and proclaim with new vigor 
the fundamental principles of liberty which are public rights, and indi- 


* Delivered at the Second Conference, held at the Mathewson Street Methodist Episcopal Church, 
November 11, 1903. 


87 


88 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


vidual responsibility. Formal religion, priestcraft, superstitious fear, and 
pagan rites, baptized and called Christian, in every age of the church have 
summoned men away from the supreme truth of the New Testament, that 
man was made for God, and can appropriate God by penitence, faith, and 
obedience ; in a word, that personal religion is every man’s right and every 
man’s duty. If the woman of Samaria could understand Christ’s message, 
feel its power in her conscience, respond to it with loyal enthusiasm in her 
heart, then anyone can grasp the Gospel and take its healing message to his 
soul, 

The supremely spiritual nature of Christ’s gospel of light is seen in the 
emphasis which He puts upon “uman testimony. His gospel is for all, even 
the most sinful, and these can experience in their hearts eternal life. After 
the experience comes testimony. ‘I do not want to possess a religion”’, 
said Charles Kingsley, ‘‘I want a religion which will possess me”. The 
gospel possessed the woman of Samaria, she proclaimed the glad news, 
‘* Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did; is not this the 
Christ?” The people listened and her words brought them to Jesus. 
When they had come under the Master’s influence, having felt the moving 
power of His words, and the charm of His benign spirit, they exclaimed to 
the woman, ‘‘Now we believe; not because of thy speaking; for we have 
heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Saviour of the 
world” (R. V.). 

This is the circle which is completed again and again in the life of the 
church as Christian disciples become soul winners; first the penitent at the 
feet of Christ, then the witnessing disciple, then the people believing in 
Jesus, each for himself accepting the truth, not on the authority of another, 
but because of the witness of Christ in his own soul. What does this all 
mean for the spiritual life of the church? It is Christ’s seal upon the 
necessity of remembering that the Kingdom of God is to be advanced not 
by the iron might of dogma, nor by the power of priestly authority, nor by 
the impressiveness of an ecclesiastical organization, nor by the splendor of 
an imposing worship, but the Kingdom of God zs to be advanced by faith, 
love and holiness, the graces of the Spirit, wrought into finished and 
beautified characters. The power of the church is not to be centered, but 
scattered. The disciples are first to become illumined, then to illumine, 
every man a bright and shining light, giving his light to the night, but giving 
also of his flame to torches of the world which else were dark, cold, dead. 

Il. Zhe Optimism of Christ asa Practical Worker. When the disciples 
returned from the village they found Christ sitting alone by the well, the 
woman having left Him to return to her home. As He talked with them, 
across the wheat fields came the people of the city (v. 35), urged by the 
eager words of the woman: ‘‘ Come, see a man which told me all things that 
ever I did; is not this the Christ?’ From the narrative it is generally 
supposed that it was in early December, four months before the harvest in 
April, and hence the significance of Christ’s words to His disciples, ‘‘ Say 
not ye, there are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say 
unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already 


THE OPTIMISM OF JESUS. 89 


to harvest”. The grain will not be harvested for four months, but a spirit- 
ual harvest is here; the people flocking through the fields show that it is at 
hand. The immediate application of these words was to the spiritual 
awakening which was begun by the conversion of the Samaritan woman and 
which was now shown to be full of promise for all, as the eager people 
sought the new Teacher. 

Appropriate as are these words to the immediate evangelization of the 
Samaritans, Meyer maintains (against Godet) that reference is also made to 
“all mankind whose conversion begun by Christ would be accomplished 
by His disciples”. Two things stand out in this passage which are valuable 
for alltime. 1. There have been other sowers, the prophets, and all men 
of God who have wrought for righteousness, but Christ is the great sower of 
truth. Nowhere in the New Testament has the dignity of labor so perfect 
an illumination as in this conception of Jesus. The carpenter at the bench 
brings to the mind the Christ who entered into the common life of men, but 
the imagination dwells with peculiar delight on this higher figure of the 
sower, the Son of man moving down the ages scattering the precious grains 
of truth which shall surely spring upin the heartsof men. 2. Christ shows 
the hopeful and inspiring nature of His Gospel by putting the work of the 
Christian disciple not under the figure of sowing, but as Meyer says “‘ under 
the cheerful image of harvesting”. The Old Testament in the same way 
represents sowing as sorrowful, reaping as joyful; as in Isaiah 9: 3, ‘“‘ They 
joy before Thee according to the joy in harvest”; and Ps. 126: 6, “‘ Though 
He goeth on His way weeping, bearing forth the seed; He shall come 
again with joy, bringing His sheaves with Him” (R. V.). Christ urges His 
disciples to become reapers in the field in which the truth has been sown 
and the ground prepared. The field is the heart of the world in which by 
discipline, by experience, by adversity, by the rude plough-shares of sorrow, 
bereavement, death, God is ever making ready for the ingathering of the 
ripened grain. ‘ And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit 
unto life eternal ”’. 

Ill. Zhe Optimism of Christ as a Teacher. Never man spake like 
this Man, for truly He was ‘“‘the Teacher come from God”. In His teach- 
ing in the fourth chapter of St. John, Christ presents a universal religion 
which annihilates all distinction of place and time, and levels all men in the 
presence of God, with whom there is no respect of persons. The Samari- 
tan woman felt the searching of Christ’s words as He revealed to her the 
secrets of her life, unknown, she thought, to any stranger, and she readily 
turned to the trite theological discussion of the relative merits of Jerusalem 
and Samaria as the center of religious power and authority. ‘Our fathers 
worshipped in this mountain; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place 
where men ought to worship”. Jesus saith unto her, “*‘ Woman, believe Me, 
the hour cometh when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall ye 
worship the Father, but the hour cometh, and now is, when the true wor- 
shippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: for such doth the 
Father seek to be His worshippers. God is a spirit, and they that worship 
Him must worship in spirit and truth” (R. V.). 


90 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


He annihilates all distinction of ¢/me in the true Kingdom of God. 
“The hour cometh and now is’? when the true worshippers shall worship 
the Father. Now is always the accepted time. Truth is timeless. Duty is 
always now, “now”, which Emerson calls the meeting point between two 
eternities. For purposes of thought and for the practical duties of life we 
distinguish epochs of time, but “‘ you do not date holiness”, says Dr. Park- 
hurst. Honor, self-sacrifice, love are not concerned with time any more 
than light has weight or fragrance color. So says St. John, “ He that hath 
the Son hath life”, Aah it now. The hour of fulness of expression of that 
life will come in the future world, but the believer hath eternal life now as 
really and as vita//y as he will ever possess it. But Christ’s words, ‘“‘ The 
hour cometh and now is” show further the reason for His supreme confi- 
dence in the triumph of faith in a spiritual God. Christ was telling of the 
day when, in no favored centre, but everywhere, there would be spiritual 
worshippers of God, and He said, ‘‘ The time cometh, and now is”. “A 
new power ’’, says President Harris, ‘“‘ had been introduced, a new cause for 
working, and, although the large results lay in the future, the cause, the 
power, was already in the life of darkened, sinning, erring humanity. He 
meant more than here and there already true worshippers could be found. 
* * * A new hour strikes when the old order changeth. Before results 
become visible, the far-sighted seer says that the hour cometh, that the 
next century, the next generation, the next decade, will witness great 
changes. But the hour cometh because it now is. He foresees because he 
sees. The seeris he who sees. Foresight of the future is insight of the 
present ”’. 

The optimism of Christ as a teacher is seen further and chiefly in His 
teaching on the ature of man. This concerns His doctrine of sin and the 
grace of God. I know of no finer analysis of the Gospel of Christ in its 
bearing on these two cardinal truths of Christianity than is given by 
Auguste Sabatier in his ‘Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion”. He 
says: ‘‘ Christ did not construct a theory of man, of his moral life, any more 
than He constructed a theory with respect to God and the universe. He 
was content to place Himself at the centre of the human consciousness, and 
to dig down to the source of life. He takes man as he is in all climates and 
in all conditions. Hedoes not declare him to be radically impotent for 
good, but neither does He flatter him by veiling his natural misery. He 
knows him to be ardent and feeble, full of needs and of illusions, capable 
of conversion, subject to passions, the victim ofall slaveries. He treats him 
as diseased, which is the truth, and He does not think He can make him 
find the principle of serious cure save in the very sense of his malady”’. 
‘He does not blunt the edge of the moral law but sharpens it”. ‘“ He infin- 
itely enhances the demands of the traditional ideal; from the outward act 
He descends to the inward feeling—He tells His disciples to love their 
enemies, to pray for those who persecute them, to answer violence by gen- 
tleness, injuries by love. This morality would easily become ascetic and 
appear impossible if it were not blended with an opposite element which 
renders it human and fruitful without either lowering or destroying it. 


THE OPTIMISM OF JESUS. gt 


That element is mercy and forgiveness: it is pure, unconditional grace 
which in misery makes room for hope, and in repentance opens the door to 
faith and to the work of faith. These two elements, inexorable law and 
unconditional grace, are so intimately blended in the Gospel of Christ 
that the Gospel only subsists in its originality and with its power by their 
perfect fusion and reciprocal and constant action”’. 

These glowing words reveal the true optimism of Christ regarding 
human nature and human destiny. That which makes an eminent physician 
is his skill in diagnosis. It avails nothing that modern science has discov- 
ered medicines and principles of treatment to arrest disease, if the particular 
malady challenging attention be not recognized. Jeremiah describes the 
criminal complacency of the prophets, priests, and leaders of his day, who 
“have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying 
peace, peace; when there is no peace”. The hurt was “the shortcomings 
and sins of the nation”, and the leaders were ‘like worthless surgeons. 
They refuse to examine or probe the wounds of those who are under their 
charge, and for the sake of their own ease, assure their patients that all is 
well”. False optimism which minimizes the danger and malignity of sin is 
cowardly as well as indifferent, dreading a deep probe and a seaching 
analysis, forgetting that true optimism is not in the diagnosis but in the 
remedy. ‘(he diagnosis should be merciless, frigidly scientific ; the remedy 
should be benign as the love of God, mandatory as hope founded on the 
divine compassion. It is false kindness and gross negligence to say 
“health, health”, when there is no health, but fatal disease. The worst 
must be known that the best may be applied. So with sin. The greatness 
of Christ is shown in His friendly wounds, in the end far more grateful than 
the kisses of an enemy. Nothing that needs to be told is kept back by this 
frank benefactor of the human race. The probe of righteousness precedes 
the balm of Gilead. Sinai is the background of Calvary. Abounding in 
messages of the love of God, divine forgiveness, the glory of spiritual union 
with the Father, and the hope of immortality, the teaching of Christ holds 
up the soul of man before the mirror of the perfect law of liberty, that we 
may behold it in the bondage of sin, and be filled with a passionate desire 
for that true ‘liberty wherewith Christ has made us free”’. 

The world does not want its hurt of sin handled lightly. Horace 
Bushnell used to say that the dignity of man is seen in its ruins. Large 
phrases about the soul of man must not hide from us the fact which all 
literature, history, and experience attest, that sin has weakened our spiritual 
powers and sullied our spiritual fame. Unless there be something to be 
delivered from, there can be no Christ the Redeemer; if there be no sin, 
there can be no salvation from sin. It is a great thing to dream dreams; 
it is a greater thing to see visions. Dreams are of the darkness; visions 
are, like Shelley’s poet, ‘“‘ Hidden in the light of thought”. We may dream, 
if we will, of the final triumph of right, yet, when we awake, the unsubstan- 
tial stuff of which our dreams are made is painfully evident; but one keen, 
quick vision of the malignity of sin, and an equally clear perception of the 
re-creating mercy of God, is a pledge of present and future victory. 


92 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


There are two streams in every man’s life says Dr. Matheson: The 
stream of heredity and the stream of grace. Personal sins bring us shame, 
defeat, the sorrow of remorse; for these we are responsible. But besides 
these we feel in our hearts the downward pull of the race’s transgressions 
and moral failures. Whatever may be our personal views of the original 
holiness of man, this we must all affirm, with Dr. Matheson, that the stream 
of grace is o/der than the stream of heredity. God’s mercy is from everlast- 
ing fo everlasting, and ‘‘the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the 
world” is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”. In the 
message which Christ brought to a poor, broken, outcast woman in Samaria, 
He gave to all mankind the promise of eternal life; a new /eaven of ideals 
of hope, faith and peace; a new eurth of conduct, of righteousness, love and 
Joy. 


* THE SOURCE OF JESUS’ STRENGTH. 


(ST. JOHN 4: 34.) 
{BY REV. WILLIS PP. ODELI, D. D., 


PASTOR OF CALVARY METHODIST EprIscOopAL CHURCH OF NEW YORK. 


History tells us of a distinguished general who conducted a great army 
through a desolate and hostile country with much enthusiasm to a remark- 
able triumph. The secret of his success lay in his own resolute and genial 
personality. His soldiers, worn and footsore, were but scantily supplied 
with food. The heat of the sun was dreadfully oppressive. Day by day 
the ranks thinned out as climate and privation wrought their natural results. 
But in spite of all discouragements the gallant hosts pressed on. The 
explanation was to be found in the conduct of the leader, Foregoing the 
privileges of rank he dismounted and put himself at the head of the column, 
sharing with the common soldier the fatigue and hardship of the march. 
He ate the same food and slept with them shelterless under the open skies. 
The effect of his presence and example was most exhilarating. The army 
would have followed him anywhere, even to the gates of death. 

On a certain occasion Jesus, addressing His disciples, said: ‘‘I have 
given you an example that ye should do, as I have done to you”. In his 
first epistle to the churches, Peter takes up the same idea and declares that 
Christ has left us an example that we should follow His steps. In many 
places in Scripture a similar notion is set forth with great distinctness. 
There is no more manifest teaching of the New Testament than that the 
disciple is to endeavor to be like his Master. 

One of the most popular religious books of the ages is “‘ The Imitation 
of Christ”, by Thomas 4 Kempis. Written as it was by a medieval monk, 
it is nevertheless loved and prized by all communions of Christians. The 
very title challenges attention and commends it. The great example is 
presented as a model whose virtues are to be copied. What Christ did, His 
followers are to do. Dr. Stalker is the author of another volume with wider 
scope but built upon the same idea, under the name “Imago Christi’’. 
It describes the Master as He appeared in His human relations, in the home, 
the state, the church, society, and as He conducted Himself as a teacher, a 
man of feeling, a student, a philanthropist, a winner of souls. Here also 
Christ is a model. Dr. Sheldon in his well known work “In His Steps”, 
discusses the question ‘‘ What Would Jesus Do?” and endeavors to point 
out the path of duty on the basis of an obligation to imitate the great 
example. All these volumes are exceedingly valuable because they enforce 
the great truth that in the Master there is an ideal for all disciples. 

* Delivered at the Second Conference, held at the Mathewson Street Methodist Episcopal Church, 
November 11, 1903. 


+ Now Pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Germantown, Philadelphia, Penn. 


93 


94 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


The incident brought to our attention by the passage selected by your 
committee for our consideration at this hour is very suggestive. The scene 
is laid at a familiar point. Jesus is seated on the curbing of Jacob’s well. 
He had just come on a long and dusty journey from Jerusalem. It was the 
sixth hour of the day. The disciples had gone to the neighboring Sychar 
to purchase food. The Master had remained behind to rest. Thus seated 
and waiting, a woman from the town approached Him. He entered into 
conversation with her and gradually led the way to the proclamation of 
important truths. He laid before her a great privilege and aroused keen 
interest in His offers. She came to see herself in a new light and was 
surprised and disturbed. While He talked with her the disciples returned 
with a plentiful supply of edibles. They were amazed to find Him in 
conversation with a woman. When she left they spread out the food they 
had procured and invited Him to eat. To their astonishment He replied, 
“IT have meat to eat that ye know not of”. This still further amazed them. 
What could He mean? Hadany man brought Him ought? To their puzzled 
inquiry He answered, ‘‘My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me”. 

The theme on which I am announced to speak is ‘‘ The Source of Jesus’ 
Strength”. The idea embodied in the Scripture selected finds an appro- 
priate putting in this statement. The committee who formulated it have 
brought the teaching of the passage before us into clear light. Jesus was 
possessed of notable strength and in the words just quoted He revealed the 
secret of it. : 

It will be readily agreed that the strength referred to in theme and 
Scripture is not of the muscular sort. The word as here employed does 
not stand for brawn, or physical virility. There are no reasons for thinking 
that Jesus was particularly distinguished in these directions. His bodily 
resources were probably only of the average kind. We know He was not 
a weakling, for He endured many hardships with patience and sustained 
vigor. But He was not an athlete. He did not attract attention on account 
of physical prowess. His distinguishing ability lay in another realm. 


~ Of course strength of any kind is valuable. It is an asset worth pos- 
sessing. Itis stock in trade. It isa bank account. One can always turn 
it to advantage. But there are varieties of strength. That is to say, one 
may be strong in several directions. ‘The strength contemplated in the 
theme and provided for in the text is that which is characteristic of the 
soul. By it one faces peril, bears burdens and endures hardships with 
great readiness and without flinching. In this realm Jesus was very strong. 
Of His soul we may say it was gigantic in its proportions. He wasa veritable 
athlete when it came to facing temptations and attempting tasks requiring 
courage and resolution. 
How did He come to the possession of such ability? By what means 
did He develop that strength for which He was so distinguished? It isa 
practical inquiry, for upon it turn some very important lessons. 
It should be remembered that strength everywhere depends on nourish- 
ment. Full measure of strength calls for adequate nourishment. Without 


THE SOURCE OF JESUS’ STRENGTH. 95 


food all physical powers presently decay. Life indeed is dependent upon 
it. Physical vigor is everywhere maintained by entirely natural processes. 
Properly enough, therefore, the scientist gives attention to the kind of 
food best fitted to produce certain results. [t is well known that nitrogen- 
ous foods are good for burden bearers, because they minister to muscular 
power. Carbonates are necessary for those who are exposed to rigorous 
weather, because they develop heat. Phosphates are useful for brain work- 
ers, because they build up nervous energy. When, therefore, one knows 
what he wants to do, he can easily determine what kind of supplies are 
necessary for him. 

Jesus knew what He wanted, and He also knew how to get it. He saw 
that the special tasks to which He was called would put particular strain 
upon the spiritual nature and that, therefore, He must have nourishment for 
soul. Accordingly, He selected the food which would contribute to the 
desired result. What was this food? Let us see. 

“My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me”. There are no mys- 
teries in this passage It isa very simple statement, and its meaning is 
readily grasped. Obedience is clearly the thing to which reference is 
made. ‘This isthe food—the meat on which He fed. It will be remembered 
that when He was a boy He said, in explanation of His conduct in the 
temple, “‘ Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?”’ The 
temper and purpose He then displayed were characteristic. On the basis of 
His established habits He could truly say, ‘‘I do always the things that please 
Him”. That was the perpetual attitude He assumed toward the divine will. 
In the model prayer which He taught His disciples to say occur the words, 
“Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done”. It was in this spirit that He met 
all duties and performed all services. He was entirely submissive to the 
Father’s will. And so at Gethsemane, when the clouds shut down about 
Him and He was face to face with the awful test, He said, ‘“‘ Not as I will, but 
as Thou wilt”. It is not surprising, in view of this complete subjection to 
the wishes of the One who sent Him, that the voice from heaven declared, 
“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”. 

Now, what were the psychological processes by which this sort of 
nourishment was transformed into spiritual vigor. The question is an 
important one; but it will not be difficult to find a satisfactory answer. 
The route is short and can be easily followed. 

The obedience of Jesus was complete. He was absolutely committed 
to the service of His Father. The thoroughness of His consecration 
brought Him into entire harmony with God. There was no sense of 
estrangement or antagonism. He had no will other than the divine will, 
or, rather, He willed that His will should be completely surrendered to the 
divine will. 

Of necessity there resulted a feeling of unity. He was sure that He 
was acting in accord with the divine purposes. He was contributing 
directly to the accomplishment of the divine program. There was no waste ~ 
of energy because no false move. He was doing precisely what the over- 
ruling Power in the universe desired Him to do. 


96 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


His faith in the wisdom of this Power lifted Him into an atmosphere of 
hope. Ultimate success must come. The divine plans, founded in wis- 
dom, must be crowned with triumph. There could not be any permanent 
failure, for Omnipotence and Omniscience formed a combination which 
rendered defeat impossible. Naturally enough His soul caught the 
enthusiasm of a great ideal. A consummation devoutly to be desired was 
sure to be accomplished. The vision filled and thrilled Him with delight. 

The satisfaction imparted by the prospect not only delighted Him, it 
exhilarated and stimulated Him. There was refreshment and invigoration 
of spirit in the outlook. The old prophet said: ‘The joy of the Lord is 
your strength”. This came to be literally true in the experience of Jesus. 
In His soul there was a sweet and restful confidence which enabled Him to 
rejoice in the presence of all tasks. The gladness of His heart infused 
vigor into every fibre of His being. There was genuine tonic in the view 
presented to His awakened intelligence. However difficult might be the 
undertaking, and however long delayed the result, He should yet see of the 
travail of His soul and be satisfied. 


It was some such an experience as this which came to Him as He sat 
on the famous well and opened to the quickened conscience of the woman 
from Sychar the great truths of the Gospel. He had made known to her the 
true character of God as a spirit, to whom spiritual worship alone was 
acceptable. He had announced in distinct terms the fact of His Messiah- 
ship. In fulfillment of His commission to proclaim the abounding grace of 
heaven He had set before her the opportunity of partaking of that ministry 
which should be in her a well of water springing up unto everlasting life. 
He caught the fire of an eager longing for the immediate salvation of an 
aroused soul and His whole nature was lifted up. The weariness of the 
flesh was quite forgotten in the stimulation of spirit. 


In all this it should be noticed that there was absolutely nothing 
miraculous; nothing even marvelous; nothing, indeed, really surprising. 
The process was a wholly natural one. It is entirely within the bounds of 
reason to say that Christ simply illustrated in this instance, as indeed in 
many others, the possibilities of all men. He showed what any person 
might experience who would be willing to meet the conditions. He revealed 
the secret of spiritual power. What He did, anyone could do. As He devel- 
oped strength by obedience, so any person who would pay the price might 
reach a similar result. The invigoration which came to Him was precisely 
like that which will come to any one who will yield himself completely to the 
divine control. 

Examples of eager enthusiasm, springing out of obedient service, are 
many and inspiring in the history of the centuries. Sturdy souls have not 
been wanting who have followed in the footsteps of the Master and have 
come as He did to great strength. 

Foremost among the apostles stands that grand apostle to the Gentiles. 
He was betrayed by false brethren; he was entrapped by evil men; he was 
the victim of many ills; he was persecuted often by those of his own nation ; 


THE SOURCE OF JESUS’ STRENGTH. 97 


but none of these things moved Him. ‘Whose I am and whom I serve” 
was the working motto of His life. He was obedient to the divine will and 
found stimulation in it. 

In great weariness of body the saintly Chrysostom resolutely faced the 
deprivations and miseries of banishment. He could not be bought by royal 
favor nor frightened by royal threats. Absolutely loyal to conscience he 
was strong with the strength which comes from a consciousness of service 
faithfully performed. To the last his soul was cheerful and contented. 

Xavier was moved by a burning passion for the unsaved. Though a 
Roman Catholic, he earnestly sought the good of souls. He was wholly 
given to the task of proclaiming the Gospel and leading men to accept it. 
After having traveled through many kingdoms and baptized thousands of 
people, as it is reported, He still cried, ‘‘ Yet more, O my God! yet more!”’ 
“The joy of the Lord was his strength”. He found in the delight of service 
invigoration for continued toil. 

David Livingstone exhibited a similar indifference to hardship. After 
long journeyings, Stanley found him in the centre of Africa and presented 
to him an appeal and an opportunity to return to civilization. But the old 
hero was unmoved. What cared he for the applause of men: On his soul 
were the needs of suffering millions. He would stay where he was rather 
than desert the field of duty. On his last birthday he wrote: ‘My Jesus, 
my king, my life, my all, I again dedicate my whole self to Thee”. No 
wonder with such delight in the Lord he found abundant strength for labor. 

That old hero John G. Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides, closed 


a recent volume with these words: ‘‘Oh, that I had my life to begin again! 
I would consecrate it anew to Jesus in seeking the conversion of the remain- 
ing cannibals of the New Hebrides”. In labors abundant, in perils multi- 


tudinous, with courage unflinching, this man of one purpose held steadily to 
his chosen task through many stormy years. But during it all there was 
rare cheerfulness, springing out of gladsome obedience to the Father’s will. 

As in all the past, the Christian life today calls for great vigor. The 
apostolic exhortation was: ‘‘ Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His 
might”. Such an appeal is nowin order. Strength is an indispensable 
requisite for those who would acquit themselves like true soldiers of Jesus 
Christ. 

But how may one become strong? By what means may the necessary 
vigor be developed? In the experience of Jesus there is a sufficient answer. 
If men will do as He did, they may develop all the strength they need. 

Assent to a creed is not enough. Conformity to the outward require- 
ments of the church will not secure saivation. Something more is demanded. 
If Christian life is built simply on profession, when the great crises come 
disaster will be sure to follow. There must be a zeal born of deep convic- 
tion and enthusiasm nourished by service, if great victories are to be secured. 

Not those who cry ‘‘Lord, Lord!”’ but those who ‘‘do His will” are 
promised divine favor. The voice of revelation distinctly declares: 
“‘ Blessed are they who do His commandments”’, Only such have a prospect 


OP ae ey 


98 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


of entering through the gates into the city. It was the ringing counsel of 
the practical James—advice preeminently suited to these modern times— 
‘‘ Be ye doers of the Word and not hearers only ”. 

Are there any enrolled in the army of the Lord today who are unfit for 
service on the firing line? Indeed, are there not many who are better fitted 
for the hospital than for any kind of active engagement? There are many 
weaklings in the church today. They have no strength and can never be 
relied upon in an emergency. They are a burden on evangelism and a 
hindrance to the progress of the kingdom. 

What the world needs most at this hour is not harnessed Niagaras, 
steel railways belting the sides of continents, ship canals uniting oceans, but 
men and women of tense moral fibre, who can stand unmoved in the pres- 
ence of corruption, face the raging of evil men undisturbed, tower aloft 
like angels above the pigmies who crouch at their feet, and with invincible 
will and dauntless daring help to hasten the day when Christ’s dominion 
shall become universal. 

Let me venture an exhortation. Let us enthrone the will of God in our 
hearts. Let us make Jesus the model of our conduct. Let us with enthusi- 
asm imitate the glorious example He set. 

Says Stalker in his “Imago Christi”: ‘The imitation of Christ! 
The very sound of this phrase goes to the heart of every Christian and sets 
innumerable things moving and yearning in the soul. There is a summons 
in it like a ravishing voice calling us to sunny heights. It is the sum of all 
which in our best moments and in our deepest hearts we desire”. 

We have not made enough of this. We have been slow to appreciate 
its value. We have been placing so much emphasis upon the meaning of 
Christ’s sacrifice that we have forgotten the significance of His example. 

Of course He died to redeem us. This we must always remember. 
We will not cease to exalt the cross. In the presence of that unparalleled 
love, which led to His self-surrender to the cruel agony of Calvary that He 
might secure deliverance for man from the guilt of sin, we must forever 
_kindle ardent affection. 

But while we keep the atonement perpetually in view, as the measure of 
divine love for us, let us also keep the life of the Master before us as the 
ideal of conduct. Let us remember that He lived to show men how to live. 
Let us take Him as our example, and let us ceaselessly endeavor to imitate 
His virtues. 


*THE GOSPEL OF JOHN IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 
OF THE CHURCHES. 


BY ERHNV. BENRERY | M. KING, DD: Ds 


PASTOR OF THE FIRST BAPrisT CHURCH IN PROVIDENCE. 


This important topic will be best presented, if we consider the avowed 
purpose of the Gospel; the fitness of the author to carry it out; the manner 
in which he has done it; and the success which he has achieved. As some 
of the topics discussed in these Conferences are special and have to do with 
particular passages, while others are general and have to do with the scope 
and purpose of the entire Gospel, it is inevitable that there will be instances 
of repetition and it is quite possible that there may be honest differences cf 
opinion in interpretation. 

Professor Cremer, in his able ‘‘ Reply to Harnack on the Essence of 
Christianity ’’, defines his view of the purpose of the Fourth Gospel in the 
following words: ‘The Johannean Gospel is intended for the congregation 
of believers who already know and follow Christ, and is meant to strengthen, 
confirm and enrich them, and to develop their faith more fully. The 
synoptic Gospels, on the other hand, give us that record of Jesus’ career 
and history as it was again and again reported in connection with the 
missionary preaching, and as it very soon took, as to the main parts, a 
relatively fixed form. Matthew gives the apology of Jesus’ Messiahship 
over against Judaism; Luke a record of the history of Jesus, and the preach- 
ing of the Gospel set down for the enlightenment of a prominent heathen 
interested in Christianity ; while Mark has put together what he heard again 
and again in the missionary preaching. We may thus understand how it is 
that we meet a difference between the Johannean account and that of the 
synoptists, which is similar to the difference that appears between the apos- 
tolic account and that of Christ Himself”. 

In other words, John’s Gospel contains the unfolding by Christ of 
Himself, His person and mission, to those who had become His disciples, 
and were to some extent prepared to welcome and apprehend, and be 
enriched by the deeper spiritual truths of His kingdom. 

The purpose of this latest, maturest, richest of the four Gospels has 
been variously conceived by different writers. There is a tradition that 
John was requested by his fellow Christians to prepare a Gospel with a view 
to counteract the influence of certain heretical views of the nature of Christ 
which were prevalent near the close ot the first century; and that before 
consenting he asked them to spend with him three days in fasting and 
prayer that he might ascertain the Lord’s will in a matter so serious and 


* Delivered at the Second Conference, held at the Mathewson Street Methodist Episcopal Church, 
November 11, 1903. 


99 


100 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


sacred. Jerome seems to have accepted the tradition as founded on fact, 
for he says that “ John last of all wrote a Gospel when asked to do so by 
the bishops of Asia, against Cerinthus and other heretics, and especially 
against the rising dogma of the Ebionites, who asserted that Christ did not 
exist before Mary”’. 

It looks sometimes as if the writer of this Gospel was seeking to meet 
objections, and to convince heretics, and was well acquainted with the 
philosophic thought of that philosophical age. He could not have been 
ignorant of Philo and his teachings of the Logos—that Jewish philosopher 
of Alexandria who died within ten years after the crucifixion of Christ, and 
who endeavored to harmonize the Mosaic religion with Platonism. It was 
the “higher criticism” of that day, an attempt to reduce revelation to a 
philosophic basis by the hypothesis of a Logos, personal or impersonal, 
Philo seemed to be uncertain which, the embodiment of all divine power 
and wisdom—a doctrine which was the fruitful germ of all the gnostic spec- 
ulations and heresies of the second and third centuries. But John, guided 
by the divine Spirit (for no humble fisherman unaided could have attained 
unto it), declared Christ to be the true, living, personal Logos, possessor of 
creative power and infinite wisdom, God and Saviour in one person, God 
manifest in the flesh. The word “ Logos”’ in its religio-philosophic use was 
like ‘the altar to the unknown God” at Athens. John seized the word and 
the opportunity it afforded, and in applying it to Christ gave to it a larger 
and truer interpretation, a diviner fulness and richness of meaning, vir- 
tually saying, ‘‘Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I 
unto you”. In thought, he went back to the story of creation, “In the 
beginning God created tle heavens and the earth”’, and in similar language 
opened his story of redemption, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God”. He gathered up all that 
was true in revelation and all that was highest and best in philosophy, and 
centered it in Christ, the Son of God, the Divine Logos. (An extract from 
«Our Gospels’’, pp. 80, 81, by Henry M. King.) 

Other writers hold the view that John’s Gospel was intended to be sup- 
plementary to the other Gospels, to supply the deficiencies of the first three, 
especially in reference to the ministry of Christ in Judea, and the remark- 
able events which took place during its one year, possibly two years’ dura- 
tion, and the memorable discourses which do not appear in the synoptical 
Gospels, but form so large and unspeakably valuable a part of John’s mes- 
sage, especially the farewell discourses in the fourteenth, fifteenth and six- 
teenth chapters. It is impossible to believe with Alford, that none of the 
other Gospels had ever been seen by John. They had been written for 
thirty or forty years prior to John’s Gospel, and undoubtedly had been 
numerously transcribed, and widely circulated, and highly prized by the 
Christian communities. Ephesus was a great center of Christian life and 
activity, and it is incredible that the sacred writings of the deceased evan- 
gelists, on which the churches had come to rely for their knowledge of 
Christ and the events of His life, should not have found their way to this 


IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF THE CHURCHES. IOI 


populous city of Asia Minor, where Christianity had been planted at an 
early date, and which had been-‘‘a conspicuous scene of apostolic labors ”’. 
The character of John’s Gospel gives abundant -evidence that he was 
familiar with the contents of these earlier writings. The things which he 
omits, which he must have known and remembered by reason of his con- 
stant fellowship and close intimacy with Christ, and the things which he 
narrates, are equally conclusive on this point. He carefully avoids travers- 
ing the ground which the other Gospels had gone over. He omits all of 
Christ’s parables, and gives only one miracle in common with the other 
biographers, while he records four new ones, viz.: the turning of water into 
wine, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and the healing of the impo- 
tent man and of the one born blind. The synoptists limit their story 
almost entirely to the Galilean ministry, while John’s Gospel is largely 
devoted to the life and teachings of Christ in Judea. 

This view was held by Eusebius. He said, “‘ For these reasons the 
Apostle John, it is said, being entreated to undertake it, wrote the account 
of the time not recorded by the former evangelists * * * giving the 
deeds of Jesus before the Baptist was cast into prison. * * * It is 
probable, therefore, that John passed by in silence the genealogy of our 
Lord because it was written by Matthew and Luke, but commenced with 
the doctrine of the divinity as a part reserved for him by the divine Spirit, 
as if for a superior”’. 

If John had intended to supply the deficiencies of his predecessors in 
biographical detail, he could not have been more successful. 

But the purpose and supplementary character of John’s Gospel have a 
deeper meaning still. It was not written simply to correct errors which 
were becoming prevalent, honorable as sucha motive would have been. 
Nor was it written and sent abroad primarily to furnish additional bio- 
graphical material, which had been omitted by the synoptists. As another 
has said, “It was not a mere patchwork to fill up vacant spaces”. Its sup- 
plementary character is seen especially in the kind of material which its rich 
chapters have preserved for Christ’s followers of all the ages. Its definite 
purpose, its supreme purpose, is generally believed to have been declared 
by the author himself, near the end of the Gospel, ‘And many other signs 
truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this 
book; but these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, 
the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through His name” 
(20 : 30, 31). 

The confirmation of faith in the Messiah as the Son of God, the deepen- 
ing, the developing, the enriching of the life of the disciples of Christ, and 
so of the churches of Christ, may be said to have been the aim consciously 
and constantly present in the mind of John in the selection of his material. 
It was preeminently a spiritual Gospel. It is no disparagement of the other 
Gospels to say that they have to do largely, I say largely, with the outward 
manifestation of Jesus, His genealogy, His birth, His boyhood, His outward 
associations, the events of His life, His displays of miraculous power, that 


102 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


which was visible and made its appeal to the senses, all of which was 
necessary to give to the world a real, living, historic portrait of our Lord. 
But something more was required for the deeper interpretation of His 
nature and spirit and mission. Clement of Alexandria said: “John, last, 
perceiving that the bodily things had been made manifest in the Gospels, 
being also encouraged by his intimate friends, and moved by the Spirit of 
God, made a spiritual Gospel’. 

That John was especially fitted for this service no one can doubt. His 
natural characteristics, his special intimacy with his Master, that about 
him that caused Christ to draw him into the inner circle of His friendships, 
to His very bosom at the farewell supper, and that made him forever known 
as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’’, and also his now mature and ripe 
experience and long instruction through many years by the Spirit, who was 
promised to lead receptive minds into all the truth, and his ever deepening 
insight into the profoundest truths of revelation, all these things qualified 
John in a preeminent degree for the preparation of that treatise which should 
round out to a divine completeness the canon of inspiration, and made him 
‘the greatest, as he was the last of the spiritual teachers of the Church”. 
Had the Gospel of John been written forty years earlier, its form undoubt- 
edly would have been different. It was the production of the Spirit of God 
working through a mind which had had a rich, full experience of divine 
truth, and an ever growing and strengthening apprehension of the person 
of Christ as well as of that life of God, that true and eternal life, which 
faith in Christ generates in the heart of the believer. 

Alford has drawn the following striking contrast between the work of 
the two great apostles, Paul and John, while unfolding the true aim of the 
latter: ‘‘The great apostle of the Gentiles, amidst fightings without and 
fears within, built in his argumentative Epistles the outworks of that temple 
of which his still greater colleague and successor was chosen noiselessly to 
complete, in his peaceful old age, the inner and holier places; and this after 
all, ranging under it all secondary aims, we must call the great object of 
the evangelist—to advance, purify from error and strengthen that matured 
Christian life of knowledge, which is the true development of the teaching 
of the Spirit in men, and which the latter part of the apostolic period wit- 
nessed in its full vitality”. 

The supplementary character, the superior value, the crowning place 
and service of the Gospel of John have been recognized by the friends and 
foes of Christianity alike. This Gospel has called forth the fiercest assaults 
of unbelievers who have looked upon it as the very citadel of the Christian 
faith, whose capture would mean the overthrow of supernatural religion. 
On the other hand it has made its appeal successfully to the intelligent 
faith of multitudes of devout scholars, and has found its confirmation in the 
deepening spiritual life of the Church to which it has ministered as from a 
fresh and inexhaustible reservoir. Augustinesays: ‘In the four Gospels, 
or rather in the four books of the one Gospel, the apostle St. John, not 
undeservedly with reference to his spiritual understanding compared to an 


IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF THE CHURCHES. 103 


eagle, has lifted higher and far more sublimely than the other three his 
proclamation, and in lifting it up he has wished our hearts also to be lifted”. 
An old Latin hymn, referring to the eagle-character of John reads: 


“Bird of God! with boundless flight 
Soaring far beyond the height 

Of the bard or prophet old; 

Truth fulfilled and truth to be— 
Never purer mystery 

Did a purer tongue unfold”. 


Origen says: ‘‘We may presume then to say that the Gospels are the 
first fruits of all the Scriptures, and the first fruits of the Gospels is that of 
John, into whose meaning no man can enter unless he has reclined upon the 
bosom of Jesus”. The following is the confession of Claudius: ‘When I 
read John, it always seems to me that I see him before me, reclining at the 
last supper on the bosom of his Lord, as if his angel held the light for me, 
and at certain parts would place his arm around me, and whisper something 
in my ear’. Luther speaks of John as ‘the one true, tender, main Gospel”. 

Ernesti calls this Gospel ‘‘ the heart of Christ”. Biederman character- 
izes it as “the most wonderful of all religious works”. De Wette says of 
its expressions: ‘‘They glow with a lustre more than earthly”. Herder 
exclaims in irrepressible admiration: ‘It was written by the hand of an 
angel”. Kaufman denominates John “the Plato of the inspired circle”. 
Lange affirms that ‘since Irenaeus it has remained for the sons of the 
apostolic spirit, the crown of the apostolic Gospels’. Tholuck declares: 
“This Gospel speaks a language to which no parallel whatever is to be 
found in the whole compass of literature; such childlike simplicity, with 
such contemplative profundity ; such life and such deep rest; such sadness 
and such severity; and above all, such a breath of love”. Farrar says: 
“The first three evangelists give us diverse aspects of one glorious land- 
scape. St. John pours over that landscape a flood of heavenly sunshine, 
which seems to transfigure its very character, though every feature of the 
landscape remains the same”’. Again Herder says: ‘That little book is a still 
deeper sea, in which the sun and stars are mirrored ; and if there are eternal 
truths (and such there are) for the human race, they are to be found in the 
Gospel of John”. Hovey says: “ For, verily, beneath the tranquil surface 
of this Gospel, which is filled to so great an extent with what the Lord Him- 
self said, are deep and fervid ocean-currents of holy life and love, which no 
one can undertake to explore and describe without being made to feel the 
dimness of his vision and the feebleness of his speech”. And Godet says: 
“Tt was he who bequeathed to the world in his three works the three-fold 
picture of the life in God; in the person of Christ (the Gospel); in the 
Christian (the Epistles) ; andin the Church (the Apocalypse). He anticipated 
more perfectly than any other the festival of the eternal life”. 

This wonderful, profound, mature, superior, superhuman, angelic Gospel 
may be said to be, then, preeminently the Gospel of life, of life through belief 
in Christ as the Son of God, not life apart from Christ, but life through 


104 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


faith in Christ, in His revealed nature and mission and power, life through 
the receiving of Christ into the soul, through personal union with Christ, 
life which has its origin in Christ and its sustenance and development in 
Christ, which is truly the life of Christ, which is the life of God who only 
hath eternal life, life for the individual, life for the church, and life for the 
world. 

This Gospel sets forth the divine person of Christ and the sacrificial 
work of Christ more clearly and fully than is done anywhere else. It begins 
with His preexistence and eternal oneness with God, and ascribes to Him 
the creation of all things. It goes on to speak of Him as the Incarnate 
Word, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, the ladder of 
communication between heaven and earth, and the teacher of the new spir- 
itual birth, of which baptism is the beautifully appropriate symbol (an inter- 
pretation required by the oriental form of expression, clearly taught by the 
prayer book of the Church of England, where it defines baptism as ‘‘an out- 
ward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us”’, and 
necessitated by the spiritual nature of the Christian religion, which is not a 
mechanism to be manipulated by human hands, but a life imparted directly 
by the Spirit of God, whose disciples are new-born ‘not of the will of the 
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”’). 

And, further, this Gospel represents Christ as the water of life, the 
promised Messiah, the quickener of the soul, the just and final judge, the 
light of the world, the true manna from heaven, the author of true spiritual 
freedom, the good shepherd who giveth his life for the sheep, the resurrec- 
tion and the life, the architect and builder of the heavenly mansions, the 
adequate manifestation of the Father, the living vine, the sender of the 
Holy Spirit, the rightful possessor of divine glory and sharer of it with His 
disciples, the confessed King in the realm of truth, and, at the same time, 
the willing victim upon the cross of error and shame; and then it concludes, 
as it began, with the confession of Thomas, ‘“‘ My Lord and my God”; and 
upon these great truths, and upon faith in these truths, it posits the acquisi- 
tion and the continuance of spiritual life in the soul of man. It unfolds 
with remarkable clearness and fullness the deeper spiritual verities of the 
person and the mission of the Son of God, and then says—believe these veri- 
ties, accept Him in whom they all centre, and you shall have life. ‘‘ These 
are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, 
and that believing ye might have life through His name”. 

The word “life” is found more than forty times in John’s Gospel, and 
in most significant connections. ‘In Him was life and the life was the 
light of men”. ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlast- 
ing life”. ‘The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water 
springing up into everlasting life”. ‘‘ Ye will not come to Me that ye might 
have life’. ‘I am that bread of life”. ‘‘ Except ye eat of the flesh of the 
Son of Man, and drink His blood”’, that is, except ye believe in a Saviour 
crucified for you, “ye have no life in you”. “Iam come that they might 


IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF THE CHURCHES. 105 


have life, and that they might have it abundantly ”, not “‘ more abundantly ” 
as the received version has it, for this spiritual life, which Christ came to 
bring, has no existence in the unregenerate heart. 

““My sheep hear My voice and they follow Me; and I give unto them 
eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them 


out of my hand’’. ‘I am the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth in 
Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live”. “I am the way and the 
truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me’. ‘As the 


branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine (and draw 
every moment its life from the vine) no more can ye, except ye abide in 
Me”. “This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true 
God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent”. ‘“ These are written that ye 
might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing 
ye might have life through His name”’. 

These, and many other passages show us the tremendous emphasis 
which John’s Gospel lays upon spiritual life, its source and its suste- 
nance, its origin and its development, as born of faith, and kept alive by 
faith, in the preexistent, divine, only-begotten, crucified, risen Son of God. 
It is this that distinguishes this Gospel from the others; that gives to it its 
exalted character, its transcendent richness and its marvellous power. Its 
lofty spiritual truths kindle in the soul aspirations after greater nearness to 
God. Its profound spiritual philosophy deepens and purifies the currents 
of life. Its sublime revelations of the Saviour, which must ever in this finite 
sphere be clothed with mystery, lift us up out of the realm of sense and of 
material things into a new atmosphere and introduce us to a new order of 
being. ‘‘The Word was with God and was God”. ‘The Word was made 
flesh”. ‘We beheld Hisglory, the glory as of the only begotten Son of the 
Father, full of grace and truth”. In the light of these passages we get new 
conceptions of sonship with God, its privilege and its meaning, its dignity 
and its obligation, and we say with the apostle Paul, “Beholding as ina 
glass the glory of the Lord we are transfigured into the same image from 
glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord”. 

Is there any aspect of essential, saving truth that is not clearly presented 
in John’s Gospel, and in some instances more clearly than in any other 
inspired book? Is there any proper motive to Christian faith and obedience 
that it does not appeal to with the utmost tenderness and fidelity? Is there 
any chord of the renewed heart that it does not touch with the hand of a 
Master ? 

How beautifully it sets forth the simplicity of saving faith! As the bit- 
ten Israelite looked to the brazen serpent, so may the sin-conscious soul 
look to Christ and be healed. How impressively, and for all places and 
times, does it declare the spiritual nature of worship! ‘God is a Spirit, 
and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth”. How 
strikingly does it emphasize the necessity of a living and perpetual union 
with Christ in order to the possession and retention of spiritual life, and the 
production of spiritual fruit! ‘I am the vine, ye are the branches; he that 


106 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


abideth in Me and I in Him, the same bringeth forth much fruit, for without 
Me ye can do nothing”. How persuasively does it inculcate the spirit of 
absolute and perpetual obedience to Christ! ‘‘My sheep hear My voice 
and they follow Me”. “If ye love Me, keep My commandments”. How 
tenderly does it plead for the intimate fellowship and unbroken oneness of 
all the followers of Christ! ‘ That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, 
art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world 
may believe that Thou hast sent Me’. How strongly and positively it 
asserts the reality and blessedness of the future life, and the eternal safety 
of all who put their trust in Jesus Christ! ‘In My Father’s house are 
many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you (if there were no 
future life, no conscious dwelling with God in peace and felicity after this 
life is over, I would not have left you in ignorance), I go to prepare a 
place for you”’, words which we repeat for their comfort by the bedside of 
the dying, and for our comfort by the open graves of our precious dead. 

But why need I further enumerate? To speak of all the passages in 
this wonderful Gospel that minister to the strengthening of the Christian 
faith and the deepening of the life of God in the soul, would be to bring the 
whole book before you, chapter by chapter, and verse by verse. 

Let the ministry of today breathe constantly the atmosphere of this 
Gospel, be found often in this holy of holies of revealed truth, sit long at 
the feet of him who sat long at the feet of the Master, and absorbed so much 
of His spirit and message, and then blank Agnosticism and lifeless Arianism, 
blind Naturalism and icy Formalism will be unknown in our pulpits. Let the 
churches give themselves to the diligent and prayerful study of this Fourth 
Gospel, and then the fatal materialism of this materialistic age, and the 
worldiness which has crept in with stealthy footsteps and with deadening 
power, and the unspirituality and apathy which cripple the benevolence, 
curtail the efforts and limit the influence of our churches, will be driven out 
at once and forever. The Gospel of John is the divine corrective of all the 
ills that afflict our modern Christianity. ; 

Dr. Henry Van Dyke says: ‘‘ With the materialism, the sensuality, 
the pride of our age, Christianity stands in conflict. With the altruism, the 
humanity, the sympathy of our age, Christianity must stand in loving and 
wise alliance. A simpler creed and a nobler life will prepare the way for a 
renaissance of religion greater and more potent than the world has known 
for centuries. It seems as if we stood on the brightening border of the new 
day. The watchword of its coming is the personal Gospel of Jesus Christ, 
in whom we find the ideal man and the real God”’. 


*SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. 
JOHN. 


BY REV. ALEXANDER MCKENZIB, D. D., 


PASTOR OF THE FIRST CHURCH, CONGREGATIONAL, CAMBRIDGE, MAss. 


LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:—I do not propose to discuss anything 
thoroughly, but to gather up some of the peculiarities and characteristics 
of this Gospel as compared with the others. The question of authorship I 
do not consider. I am myself persuaded that it was written by the man 
whose name it bears. There is the historical evidence which is so old that 
you can get very near to the time when it was written. Then, too, there is 
one thing I should think every one would feel, that it was written by an 
honest man. It was not invented; it was something that had been. A 
man could not think it out any more than he could think out a sunrise and 
describe it, if he had never seen one; or a friendship, if he had never 
known one. Again, it needed a man of very rare qualities. For instance, 
we are all familiar with the fact that St. John never mentions himself by 
name, and he never mentions the name of the mother of Jesus. He loved 
to call himself the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved”. That is the man we 
think of when we speak of the authorship of this Gospel. He dealt with 
the tenderest things of life, the most sacred things ; he dealt with the prin- 
ciples and facts of life, but if he had been nothing but a loved and loving 
man, his Gospels and Epistles would hardly have been like these we have. 
He was a man to be loved, it is true, but he was more than that, he was 
also a son of thunder. It needed just that combination to make a man go 
safely among the truths which he traversed and present the most tender 
things, and yet in such a way as to commend themselves to thoughtful, 
exacting men. While we speak of this Gospel as the Gospel of the heart, it 
is also the Gospel of the head and hand; it stands on the ground, while at 
the same time it ascends into heaven. St. John is commonly spoken of as 
an eagle which is able to soar to the greatest heights. But he had his nest 
in a tree that was very firmly rooted in this world, and if you think of him 
only in the attitude of a lover you mistake the man. Then, too, he had 
special advantages in being very near to our Lord. The nearer he came to 
Christ the more reason he had to love and admire Him. Most great char- 
acters are great because of their distance. When we come up to them they 
lose some of their superb proportions. There is that old saying, which I 
do not like to use, that ‘‘“A man is never a hero tohis valet”. I am inclined 
to believe that no man is great who is not great to his valet. You have to 
be great to the man who stands close to you and knows the secrets of your 


* Delivered at the Second Conference, held at the Mathewson Street Methodist Episcopal Church, 
November 11, 1903. 


107 


108 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


life before you can be considered truly great. And John, in standing thus 
close to Christ, marks the greatness which increased as he came to know 
Him more intimately. 

Again, as my old friend, Dr. Peabody, was in the habit of saying, one 
thing that bears witness that John wrote the Gospel is that it was written 
by an old man. A peculiarity of the old man is that he notices small 
things. In this Gospel you will find more of what we are in the habit of 
calling the trivial things of life. I suppose if he was writing the account of 
the feast at Cana, a young man would have said, ‘‘And there were set some 
water jars there which were large”. John says there were six water pots of 
stone, and that they held two or three firkins apiece. In the same way, a 
young man would have treated the last miracle of our Lord at the Sea of 
Galilee; he would have said that they (the fishermen) were quite a little 
distance off the land; an old man would say ‘“‘they were about 200 furlongs, 
I noticed”. ‘There were a multitude of fish”’; “there were 153 fishes, and 
they were big ones’’, the old man would say. ‘‘Great” is a relative term; 
he did not mean that they were large absolutely, but compared with the fish 
usually taken in the Sea of Galilee. And when this writer says there were 
153, and that they were unusually large ones, you see the fisherman is 
betrayed, and John was a fisherman. Such little traits as these go with the 
historical evidence. The Gospel was evidently written by a man with the 
characteristics of this disciple. 

I do not remember having seen it anywhere, although some of you 
may have seen it elsewhere, yet it is borne in upon me that there is one per- 
son who had a great deal to do with the writing of this Gospel whose name. 
is not mentioned in it, and that is the Virgin Mary, the mother of our Lord. 
Now when Christ was upon the cross, apparently, as far as we can read the 
story, Mary was not near, and this disciple went and brought her, and from 
the cross Jesus commended His mother to this disciple, and this disciple to 
the mother, and then comes that very interesting line: ‘‘and from that hour 
that disciple took her to his own home.” What do you suppose they did 
then? What did they talk about? They talked about the one person in all 
the world who was dearest to their hearts. They talked about what had 
just taken place, and the mother heart which had enabled her to under- 
stand and enter into the spirit of her Son was opened before the young 
man with whom she was living. In the morning and at night they talked 
about Him. Now if you wished to write the biography of any great man 
you would go where he lived; you would go into the house, look at the 
grounds, talk with the neighbors, try to get into what we call by the indefin- 
ite term the atmosphere of the man and the place. For you can not write a 
man’s biography unless you know the man himself, and the conditions of 
his life and thought. That is the reason most biographies are of so little 
use ; they can tell when a man was born and when he died, but they do not 
give you that indefinable trait which you get when you come close to the 
man. And this belongs to our Lord more than any one else. It is not 
alone what He did or said, but in what way He said it and for what reason. 


SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOSPEL. 109 


We sometimes represent Him with a halo over His head, but that is a poor 
thing, though it illustrates what I mean. And no one knew Him like His 
mother. When you get a heart that was as responsive as John’s was, and 
when they could talk together for weeks, or perhaps years, her thoughts 
would become his. It seems to me that all through, from the beginning to 
the end, there can be traced the word, spirit, and influence of that mother 
through whose soul there passes a sword when He was crucified. I was 
not to speak about the authorship of the Gospel, and yet these things cay 
us into the very spirit of it. 

St. John’s Gospel is not a book of mathematics or philosophy. It is 
the story of a great human life expressed in insufficient terms, and you 
never can read it unless you have something a thousand times better than a 
dictionary ; you must have a heart. It is itself a heart, and it must be read 
by the heart and translated by the heart. I believe that those who have 
read it with the heart and translated it into heart have never doubted it or 
its authorship. A man who has had the spirit to go through it and enter 
into it finds a witness in himself and believes because he must believe. I 
call it the Gospel of the heart, and so it is, but it is even then of a very sub- 
stantial character. The apostles had to put together two things that had 
never been put together before. They had no precedent. They had to 
show a person who carried himself in this world as a common man, in whom 
was the living and eternal God. As far as literature is concerned, there has 
never been a problem that approached this which was set before these men, 
one of whom was a fisherman, another a tax collector, another a doctor, and 
the business of the other we do not know. They had to make books so 
substantial that they could found churches upon them, and men could fashion 
their lives by them. And how finely they have done it. Some years ago, 
when I was younger and knew more than I do now, I became a lecturer in 
a theological seminary. I knew that if I was going to accomplish anything 
I had to be original. So TI tried to be original in this lectureship. I pro 
posed to tell the young men that I wanted each one to take a blank sheet of 
paper and rule it into three columns, and in the first column they should 
put down every passage in the New Testament where Christ was repre- 
sented simply as a man; in the second column they should put down every 
passage representing Christ as God, and in the third the passages repre- 
senting the union of the two. Well, so far as presenting Him as the God- 
man, I easily filled that column, and so far as presenting Him as God 
alone, I filled that column with ease, but I never have been able to find the 
first entry to put in the first column. I could not find a passage in the four 
Gospels which represents Jesus Christ as simply a man. If any of you 
know such a passage, I wish you would tell me that I may get something in 
that column. Perhaps you say, ‘“‘ Why, He was tired one day and while on 
His way through Samaria sat down onawell”. Is that the whole of the 
narrative? You must read itall, you know. You might as well take one of 
the pipes out of this organ, and get a boy to blow it, and say that is the 
organ, as to take a single sentence out of a narrative and say that that is 


110 THE GOSPEL‘ OFRIST. JS ORM. 


the whole. When you write a letter, you insist that the man shall read it all 
the way through. Now you will find that every heresy that is in the church, 
or that is coming into the church, rests upon the principle of taking a single 
instrument out of a band and then insisting that that isthe band. Why 
stop at the place where it says that Christ was tired? Go on. Presently 
He speaks to the woman who had come there to draw water, and He speaks 
such words as from the creation of the world had never been spoken, and 
have never been spoken since by any one: ‘ The water that I shall give 
you shall be in you a well of water springing up into everlasting life”. 
That is God. It is not a tired man sitting by Jacob’s well. 

Well, He was in the fisherman’s boat, and “ being weary He put His 
head on the cushion and went to sleep”. Why do you stop there? When 
the waves began to roll and the storm to increase and the boat to begin to 
sink they called Him; He stood up, He spoke to the tempest and the 
tempest became acalm. He breathed upon the waters and the waters were 
as quiet as the floor. No mere man there. If the man was asleep on the 
cushion, He was more when He stilled the storm. 

Let me give you another instance where the man very easily appears. 
He is on the cross; three are hanging side byside. They are dying; surely 
there 1s the man. Read the letter through, please. This man draws to 
Himself the attention of a fellow dying at His side. This man looks to 
Him. His gaze is the gaze of adying man. With some poor blind faith 
he prays, ‘‘ Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom ”’. 
There never has been a man since the beginning of the world who would 
have said what Jesus said under these circumstances. The best man you 
know would have said, “ My friend, let us both pray to the Father”. 
What did this man say? ‘My poor, dying friend, I shall be in paradise 
before night, and I will take you there with me.”’ That is not a man, is it? 
I have nothing for my first column. Do you think of any thing? And ~ 
how does it happen? In vain do you try to separate what God has joined 
together. In the words that were read to us, ‘“‘ The word became flesh and 
dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of 
the Father, full of grace and truth”. That is Divine life. 

Now we must expect some peculiarities in this Gospel. If you write a 
book, you do not copy what some one else has written and try to publish it 
as your own; but you try to state something that is your own, something 
that you have found out yourself. Now there were three Gospels written 
before John began, and to copy them would be a waste of parchment. 
Luke’s Gospel was written by a scientific man, a physician. The other 
two Gospels were written by different men with a different purpose. John’s 
was written a long time afterwards. He certainly might mention some 
things in a different way, but he would have to go over the same ground, 
just as they do in school. If you go into your lowest classes here today 
you find that they are teaching the alphabet and the multiplication table. 
So, if you turn to your grammar school, your high school, and university, 
you will find the same things being taught, the alphabet and the multiplica- 


SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE-GOSPEL. III 


tion table, but you will also find the higher grade of scholars and, perhaps, 
older men teaching. So, here, while John uses the same alphabet and mul- 
tiplication table, he teaches it in higher branches, for he is speaking in 
advance of that which has been written. You will find that John takes the 
initial and essential points of the Gospel and carries them further. John 
says nothing about the nativity. Why should he? That has been described. 
But he presents the incarnation. The nativity is the primary school; the 
incarnation is for the university. The Gloria in Excelsis is the beginning of 
the incarnation. Why should he write the nativity? You have it from the 
hand of a scientific man that has done it as well as John could doit. You 
have the changing of a man’s life in the earlier Gospels; you come to 
John and you have Nicodemus told to be born again. You have redemp- 
tion and forgiveness in the other Gospels, but John gives you ‘“‘the Lamb of 
God that taketh away the sin of the world.”. That is Brown University ; 
that is the highest reach of the thought and the method of it. You find the 
method of redemption described in the three Gospels, but you find John 
illustrating this. ‘As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even 
so must the Son of Man be lifted up”. ‘God so loved the world that He 
gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him should not 
perish but have everlasting life.” That is the extension of the truth, which 
in its simple principles appears in the other Gospels. But it isno more 
different than Brown University is different from the kindergarten. I think 
that is as far as I should go upon this part of my theme. 

I ask you to notice some peculiarities in this Gospel, some special 
things that are not mentioned in the others. I venture the statement that 
these peculiarities are simply a development and not inconsistencies. I 
have stated that you have in the first three Gospels the primary school, and 
in the fourth Gospel Brown University. And they are the same, only one is 
a little higher, a little older, and may express the idea more accurately. 
The readers are more advanced and have more advanced truths. 

Now itis avery singular thing that John opens his Gospel with the 
same words which were used at the beginning of the Bible. It seems to me 
remarkable that the first three things that are asserted in the beginning of 
the Bible are the same three things that are asserted in the very beginning 
of John’s Gospel. Now how do you account for that? No other writer 
ever did that. “In the beginning’’, was John’s opening. ‘In the begin- 
ning God”. John says, “In the beginning was the Word ”’, and ‘“‘ the Word 
was with God, and the Word WAS God.” Genesis further says, “In the 
beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. John says, ‘‘ In the 
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was 
God. The same was in the begioning with God. A// things were made by 
iim, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” Thus the 
first three declarations of Genesis are the first three declarations of St. 
John. And further, they are written for the same reason. John is giving 
the university account of what is givenin Genesis. He is showing what 
the world was made for and Who made it. He is entering into the mystery 


112 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


of the Divine being, Father, Son and Holy Ghost; it is God, but it is also 
the Son. The New Testament teaches that it is the Son who is the creator, 
and St. John grasped that truth, which the apostles repeated after him. So 
that when you come later on into the Book of Revelation, you find a new 
heaven and a new earth, and anew Jerusalem, and a new life, and a new 
light. John is writing the story of creation. I think that is a remarkable 
fact. The narrative in Genesis is the most remarkable thing in literature. 
The writer was describing things which took place long before he was born. 
He did it with wonderful accuracy. Some years ago I had occasion to 
speak of this, and chancing to meet a distinguished geologist spoke of it to 
him. He finally said, half impatiently, “I believe that the first living thing 
that was created was a fish.’”’ Well, I did not feel that I knew much on the 
subject, soI kept silent. I had been quoting the Bible, and here was the 
answer of science. When F reached my home I went to my Bible and 
looked the matter up. I found that my friend was right, for, back in the 
Book of Genesis, this particular honor was given to the fish, and this was 
also the last word of science. Now, if you can tell me how the unknown 
writer of Genesis knew that the first living thing created was a fish, you will 
solve the greatest problem in the literature of the world. 

Now if you will take your Gospel of John and compare it with the 
Synoptics you will find some surprising things. You will find some notable 
omissions. John has nothing of the Sermon on the Mount, or the Lord’s 
Prayer. He has nothing of the Baptism or Temptation of Jesus. He has 
scarcely anything of John the Baptist’s ministry. He omits some of the 
best parables that Jesus spoke. He omits the parable of the virgins and 
the account of that great day of judgment recorded in Matthew. All very 
substantial things, as you can see. John also omits to say that Jesus took 
little children in His arms and blessed them. The parable of the Good 
Samaritan, which we love so much, he leaves out. Perhaps the fact that 
they had been told was a good reason, but he did repeat some things that 
the others said. He madea choice of those things which best suited his 
purpose, as he registered the account of the new creation by Jesus Christ 
Himself; the creation of a new man for a new world. 

I want for a little while to notice some things in John’s Gospel that we 
do not find anywhere else. The first thing, which has already been men- 
tioned in your discussion today, is the account of the miracle at Cana 
of Galilee. We might say that is a thing John should leave out. It was 
not of any consequence, the whole thing was ethically a mistake. Why did 
he put itin? It means that Christ came down into the home life. And, 
after all, the comfort that we have in our own homes goes far to make up 
the real value of life and the pleasure of living. Think for a moment of the . 
circumstances. Here is this wedding, and the bride was probably a kins- 
woman of our Lord. He had been invited, and had taken several men with 
Him, and as usually happens under these circumstances, the wine gave out. 
We might at first think that was not a great matter, but it was. It was the 
one day of that young girl’s life. It would never have done to have the 


SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOSPEL. 113 


wine fail; it would have been a life-long disgrace. She would never have 
gotten over it. Perhaps Jesus felt in a measure responsible for it. He 
certainly pitied her, and came to her rescue as only He could do, and to 
save her cheeks from reddening with shame, he reddened the water into 
wine. 

What is the next incident? That is much more important—an inter- 
view with a wise coward, but still a coward, who came by night, 
when no one could see him, to converse with the Lord. He thought well 
of himself, but the first thing that Christ taught him was that he was 
wrong. Nicodemus said: ‘“I would like to talk with you about the 
Kingdom of Heaven”. Jesus said substantially, “It is not any use, 
you are not going there. The Kingdom of Heaven is that way, and you 
are going this way. If you really want to go there, you will have to take 
this road and turn your back upon that”. Well, that was a pretty serious 
thing to say to any man. I think I have paraphrased it a little. What 
did Jesus say? ‘‘ My dear sir, if you are going to be a child of God, you 
will have to go back and be born over again”. There are only two ways of 
becoming a man’s child or God’s child; you must either be born into the 
family or adopted into it. And all Christ’s processes are processes of 
nature, so the adoption method would not do. There is not a single eccen- 
tric thing in all the things that Christ ever did or taught. There was never 
a queer thing in any of his words or actions. If you are to be really a per- 
son’s son, you must be born so. I believe this is thought to be one of the 
severest passages in the Gospels. There are men of more than average 
intelligence who reject it, and many also fear it. It is one of the most joy- 
ful and hopeful things that has ever been taught. There is not one of you 
here who has not said at one time or another, ‘‘ Oh, if I could only live my 
life over again”. This passage says that youcan. In your school days you 
worked over your problem and found the answer was not right. But when 
you found that it was wrong you changed a figure here, another one there, 
and when finally you could not make it come right you took your sponge 
and wiped it all out and said, ‘I am going to begin over again”. Now 
that is what Christ said to Nicodemus: ‘ Begin over again as a child. 
Don’t do it as an old man, begin to grow up into the childhood toward 
God, and then when it comes time to go to heaven you will simply go 
home’. I asked my little girl one day when she came home at noon, 
“Why did you come in here?” She opened her great eyes and looked at 
me; she did not know what I meant. I said, ‘‘ Why didn’t you go into the 
Doctor’s, next door?” Finally she said, ‘“‘ Why, this is my home”. Yes, it 
is home, that is the reason you are going to heaven, you are going to your 
Father’s home. It must bea home. You have to be a.child of God if you 
wish to enter the Father’s home. There is not a man living who does not 
need this new birth. There are a great many men living today who need 
to have their lives turned back to the very source and to be born again 
into a real childhood, and fitted for the home that is in heaven. So I say it 
is one of the gladdest and most joyous things in the whole Gospel. Tothink 


114 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


of it, my friends, that a man can be born again. Think of it, that your life 
with all its blunders can be wiped out; that your sins can all be cast into 
the sea; that you can start all over again and prattle as God’s child, and 
work as God’s child, and finally go home, because heaven is your Father’s 
house. Surely the story of the new birth is good news to the men and 
women of this day. 

The next incident that comes to my mind is the Lord’s interview at the 
well of Jacob at Samaria, which was of a similar character. The Saviour 
said to this woman, ‘‘ You keep coming here day after day, and you are 
just as thirsty ; I want to tell you something”. Then He said the strangest 
word she ever heard ; the most marvelous thing that ever fell upon the poor, 
dull ear of that woman, a name she never had heard; that the eternal God 
whom her fathers worshipped was her Father. She crouched at His feet. 
Other men were ready to stone her, they frowned at her, there was but one 
friendly face, and only one who knew her, and down into her wrecked heart 
He let fall that benediction, ‘‘God is your Father, and He loves you”. ‘I 
can give unto you that water that shall become in you a well of water which 
shall be pure water, which shall be sweet, refreshing water, and you shall 
live a life indeed”. She went out and told it, and you know how much bet- 
ter she was than the disciples. The disciples went into the town to get 
things, she went into the town to give something; and ‘it is more blessed 
to give than to receive’. She even left her water-pot. I wonder what 
became of it. She went everywhere, telling it to everybody, and the people 
asked Him to stay. The people were not courteous; they said, ‘‘ We have 
heard Him ourselves, we know this is the Christ”’, and then followed their 
confession. It was a strange thing to say. There was hardly a Jew who 
believed He was the Christ ; there are many people who do not now believe 
it; ‘This is the Christ, the Saviour of the world”. How many wise men 
say today that Christ is the Saviour for the people in Providence and the 
cest of Rhode Island; that Buddha will do for the people of India; that 
Mohammed will do for the Turks and Arabians; that Confucius will do for 
the Chinese, and Christ will take care of the Anglo-Saxon. But they said 
this Gospel should be for the world. Nine years after that, when Philip 
went there, he found people waiting for him, all ready, and it is recorded 
that there “‘ was great joy in that city”. Those men had held on, they had 
stood faithful to Christ for nine years. Is not that worth telling? Was not 
that worth doing? No wonder that John puts this story in. These inci- 
dents have been with individuals. He had not very much to do with multi- 
tudes, though He talked with them when they came to Him. But Christ had 
wonderful power with individuals. There was Nicodemus. Christ did not 
* seem to get a strong hold upon him, but the man came and anointed Him 
when He wasdead. There was the rich young man who went away, but 
“went sorrowful, because he had to choose between Christ and his real estate. 
And there was poor Judas. When the treason was all over he brought the 
“money back and threw it down and went out and hanged himself. Christ 
‘had some hold upon him, but it was not enough to save him, It is that 


SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOSPEL. II5 


personal contact, the grip of spirit with spirit, that is so conspicuous in 
Christ’s life, and that is what John preeminently teaches. 

Then, at the pool of Bethesda at Jerusalem, we have the healing of the 
poor man who had been a cripple longer than Christ had been in the world. 
He had not energy enough to roll into the pool, and nobody had goodness 
enough to put him in. When Christ asked him, ‘“ Wilt thou be made 
whole?” he began to whine. ‘I have no man, when the water is troubled, 
to put me into the pool, but while J am coming another steppeth down 
before me”. ‘‘ Why, there are forty priests in the temple; here are a score 
of men going by now; here is a man just going up out of the water”. 
“ Ves, I know it’’, he seemed to reply, ‘‘ but they go away and forget us 
who are afflicted here”. And if this man was worth healing, as I think he 
was, after that there was always some one there to help any other who was 
helpless. From that day he always went round that way when he returned 
home or went to work in the morning, if he was a workman. Some one 
might stop him and ask, ‘“‘ Why do you always go by that road to and from 
your work, you know the other way is much nearer?” “Oh, I tell you, I 
know what it is, I know how it feels to be down there. See that poor fellow 
there ; I was there a long time, until the day when the good Master healed 
me, and it shall never be said, as long as I live, that there is no one there to 
put a poor cripple into the pool when the water is disturbed”. Suppose 
there was a man here in Providence and nobody had invited him to come to 
the Lord Jesus for two weeks, what do you suppose that man would think 
of the Christian people of the town? Suppose you are a professing Chris- 
tian and as Christ’s disciple you come to the Lord’s table, if you had not 
for some three or four days tried to help your fellow men into a knowledge 
of your Master, what would He think of your religion? Say to yourself, 
““T never, never will have it true that there was any man anxious to go into 
the pool to be healed who failed because I was concerned only to get into 
heaven myself. I will not let my afflicted neighbors lie unaided in their 
affliction”. Every day I will go down upon these marble steps, and these 
arms shall move any man who is there and needs it. Perhaps that is what 
John meant by telling this story, which the other apostles omitted. Good 
Doctor Sears used to say that no man ever tried to go to heaven alone who 
did not freeze by the way. You come to the God of heaven with a poor 
sinner in your arms and you will be able to read your title clear. When 
you come to the great day of the Lord, if you say “I did not do anything, 
or say anything to help any one, but here Iam”, you may hear that sad 
refrain, as it comes from our Lord’s gracious lips, ‘‘ Not he that repeateth 
the name but he that doeth the will”. 

I am detaining you longer than I ought; you are very patient. I 
should like to say something about the bread of life, which our Lord called 
Himself. All the four Gospels give an account of the feeding of the 5,000, 
but John alone mentions the teaching which was given with it. Here again 
we have the old man revealed. The other writers say “that there were 
only five loaves and two small fishes”. John says, “there is a boy here”’. 


Se 


116 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


That is the old man, he remembers the boy; and the critical point of the 
narrative is that boy. Men are always hungry, and Christ is ready to heal; 
the great trouble is to find the boy. If religion does not flourish in Provi- 
dence, it is because you do not do as the boy did, give up all you have. 
The boy has the balance of power. When the boy is willing to part with 
his barley cakes, then the multitude will be fed. 

Then we have the story of the opening of the eyes of the blind man. 
Here Jesus taught that He was the light of the world, and then He opened 
the eyes ofthe man. A good teacher said that when you want to know what 
Christianity is you should ask what took place between Jesus Christ and the 
man who was born blind ; then you have it in the lowest terms. What hap- 
pened then? Jesus looked upon him and said, “‘ Go down this hill; there is 
a pool of water there; go and bathe your eyes in it and you will receive 
your sight”. The man’s cure depended upon his trust in Christ. But why 
should he obey? Noman advised it. There was not one chance in a 
thousand that he would be cured. There was not a man in Jerusalem who 
would not say he was a fool. Many had washed their eyes in the pool of 
Siloam, and it had not helped them. But he went. The first step he took 
made him a Christian. A Christian is a man who does what Christ tells 
him to do, because Christ tells him to do it. 

Then there is that next chapter, in which our Lord calls Himself the 
good shepherd. Do you see how Joha extends everything, and yet every- 
thing is rooted in the past? The best name God has in the Old Testament 
is found in the Twenty-third Psalm. That is a very good beginning, that is 
the kindergarten. What is the shepherd when you get up to the university? 
The kindergarten says, ‘“‘ He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He 
leadeth me beside the still waters”. John says, ‘‘The Good Shepherd 
giveth His life for the sheep”. 

Then there came a day when some Greeks wanted to see Jesus, and as 
soon as the word came to Him He sent them no message, so far as we 
know. He looked up into heaven and said, ‘‘ Father, the hour is come”. 
They had begun to see the same truth which the Samaritans saw, that 
He was the Saviour of the Jews, but He was the Saviour of the world. 
“And I”, He said, ‘If I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men 
unto Me, Jews and Gentiles”. It was a new revelation, of which the 
church today is not worthy, for while we are living in luxury here in New 
England the missionary boards are halting for lack of bread. 

Then there was the raising of Lazarus. Then the new sacrament of 
washing of feet, which John alone mentions. The symbol we take to 
represent Christianity is the cross of Christ. Another symbol that Jesus 
Christ gave to represent Christianity is a basin and a towel. They belong 
together. If you are not wearing that symbol, do not wear across. He 
came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give His life a ran- 
som for many. That symbol, if carried out in His spirit, would move this 
town, if only every follower of Christ carried both the symbol and the 
spirit of the towel and the basin. 


SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOSPEL. 117 


Then comes the wonderful fourteenth chapter of John, that goes back 
to the very beginning of things and shows how the life of Christ becomes 
our life, and how Christ literally lives in us. Then there follows the prom- 
ise of the Holy Spirit, Who should come to abide with us forever. Then 
follows that marvelous prayer by the great High Priest, who bears all lov- 
ing hearts up into the embrace of the loving Father and teaches us that 
eternal life is to know God and Him. No human presumption, since the 
beginning of the world to this time, has ever dared to couple its name with 
the name of the eternal God as essential to eternal life, as Christ does here. 
And yet He said, and John records it, as a definition of eternal life, ‘‘ this is 
life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and JESUS CHRIST Whom 
Thou hast sent”. Thee and Me. What a wonderful assertion. Try to 
write your name, or the name of any one else between the name of Jehovah 
and this assertion of life. 

The crucifixion is given more in detail than in the other Gospels. 
Then comes the last interviews and the confession of Thomas when he 
bears witness to Christ as the Messiah. And then the wonderful twenty- 
first chapter closes his record. It is the ordination chapter, with Christ’s 
way of ordination. ‘“‘Lovest thou Me?” “Ido”. ‘Feed My sheep”. 
“Lovest thou Me?” “I do”. ‘Feed My lambs’. They have not 
chosen Him but He has chosen them and ordained them that they should 
go and bear fruit and that their fruit should remain. 

I wish that I had another hour to dwell upon this book, but I must 
relieve you. This is the inspiring Gospel, these words are spirit and they 
are life. My beloved friend, Professor Thayer, left this as the central, 
all-conquering truth of Christianity: ‘‘ Personal loyalty to a personal 
Master, the crucified, risen, reigning Christ”. We like to read that story 
of centuries ago, how the venerable Bede had for his last labors the transla- 
tion of this story of St. John into our words. We are told that he wrote 
while age crept upon him, and as he drew near the end of his work his 
strength failed him. His disciples urged him on. They cried, ‘“ Master, 
master, there is but one chapter more”. The master wrote on until his 
strength was gone. His disciples said, ‘‘ There is but one verse more”’. 
He summoned his failing strength and translated the one remaining verse. 
The master said, ‘It is finished”. And they answered, “It is finished’. 
He lay where he could fix his eyes upon the place where he used to pray, 
and there breathed out his spirit to that Saviour whom he had glorified. 
That is the way the Gospel of St. John came into our English speech. 


*THE WORKS OF JESUS. I.—RESURRECTION. 
(St. JOHN 5: 17-30.) 
BY REV. GEORGE P. ECKMAN, PH. D., D. D., 


PASTOR OF ST. PAUL’s METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NEW YORK. 


The passage which has been assigned to me is so wondrously fruitful 
of great thought that one could spend months in the discussion of it without 
even approximately exhausting the themes which it contains. The student 
who attempts adequately to treat this chapter finds himself embarrassed 
much in the same way as the old hero in the Norse mythology, who, being 
asked to drain a great beaker, found at length that he was vainly seeking to 
empty the fathomless ocean. The temptation to turn aside to the many 
important topics suggested by this passage must be resisted. Let us con- 
fine ourselves to the specific subject in hand. 

The power to raise the dead implies, of course, the power to impart 
life. And life can only be imparted by Him who is life. This is the cen- 
tral fact with regard to Jesus, upon which everything in this discussion must 
naturally hinge. Jesus came in the form of a man, but He differed from all 
other men in the fact that He Himself was life. Other men have received 
life, but He is essentially life. His most intimate friend said that ‘‘in Him 
was life, and the life was the light of men’. He said of Himself, ‘I am 
the way, the truth, and the life’. When He met Death, as He did fre- 
quently, He did not shrink back from him as we do, but He said, “I am 
the resurrection and the life’, and Death withdrew to his dark domain. 
He called God His own Father, and said, ‘“‘As the Father hath life in Him- 
self, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself”. This was a very 
daring claim, and was bound to provoke hostility and criticism. But the 
lucidity of His mind and the perfection of His character require us to 
believe that He was very sane and very sincere when He said, “I am life”. 
Moreover, He substantiated this claim in a most marvelous fashion by cur- 
ing the sick and raising the dead. What a hollow sham His profession to 
be ‘life’? would have been, if He meant merely, ‘I am able to give spir- 
itual life’, but showed no evidence of it in the fact that He could raise men 
from physical death; or ‘if, having fallen asleep in Joseph’s tomb, He had 
not awakened to receive the salutations of the angels. Life is a unity. We 
speak of life as physical as well as spiritual, and He who calls himself ‘ life”’ 
must be the embodiment of all the forms that we call life. He must not 
only be immanent in nature, but must transcend nature. He must not only 
pervade the mind, but He must be farabove the human mind. He must be the 
fountain of Spiritual life, and He must be the essence of life in all its various 


* Delivered at the Third Conference, held at the Beneficent Congregational Church, December 9, 1903. 


118 


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THE WORKS OF JESUS.— RESURRECTION. 119 


expressions. Now Jesus demonstrated this power in all the ranges of what 

we call life. The shrunken limb became normal and the diseased soul 

became healthy. We have never seen Him cure the sick or raise the dead, 

but we have discovered Him raising men from the deadness of sin to the life 

of conscious fellowship with God. And because we have witnessed this, we > 
believe that He could go through all the hospitals of the world and turn 

out all the sick and impotent folk in abounding health, and that He could 

go through all the asylums of the world and make lunacy a forgotten malady, 

formless (lite 7% 


I. We have in this wonderful passage, first of all, an illustration of 
Christ’s power to impart life quite apart from any human agency, except the 
response of the human will. The chapter begins with the story of the impo- 
tent man at the pool of Bethesda. Jesus beholds and addresses the unfor 
tunate man, and arouses in his soul the latent desire to be made whole, — 
and leads him out of helplessness into abundant life. 


Now this passage is no sooner read than some hard-brained man who 
thinks more of mathematics than dogmatics, who would rather be logical 
than theological, declares that it is a story more worthy of the Middle Ages 
than of our times, and wants to know how the Bible can expect to hold the 
allegiance of intelligent people while it adheres to such preposterous tales, 
which remind one of the Church of St. Anne de Beaupré, or the statues of 
the bleeding saints, or the grotto of Lourdes. He does not know that_ 
textual criticism removes certain portions of the narrative which are offen- 
sive to reason. Our Revised Version recognizes the fact that a popular 
misconception of the day about angelic interference in the waters of a ther- . 
mal spring has been transferred from the margin of an old manuscript into 
the body of the text, and has wisely omitted it. Yet this may be done 
without impairing the value of the story. On the other hand, it receives 
added strength. Those who throw over an entire narrative because some 
of its details do not appeal to their reason are as unwise as an old Dutch 
farmer, whose buildings were overrun with rats, and who resorted to the 
expedient of burning down the structures in order that he might deliver 
himself from the pests. There are persons today calling themselves logical 
who, because occasionally they discover a minor defect in the Scriptures, 
repudiate the whole system of Christianity. But after criticism has done its 
most, there remains the fact that Jesus did heal the impotent man. Wecan- 
not strike out the supernatural from the New Testament. It is here and 
everywhere. And while the skeptical may question the miraculous element 
in this healing, on the supposition that the man was possessed of such a dis- 
ease as only needed for its removal an authoritative voice to make the vic- 
tim’s will assert itself, no such explanation will account for many other 
recorded miracles. And we have no occasion to make apology for Jesus. 
He is life, and life essentially. And what we call the miraculous is simply . 
the extraordinary emergence of life, the unusual working of an activity that 
is constantly in procedure. Huxley admitted that there was no inherent 
reason for denying the credibility of a miracle ; and we who have seen Jesus _ 


120 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


working spiritual miracles in this twentieth century have no reason to dis- 
credit the story of His physical miracles in the first century. But Jesus 
was always chary of performing miracles. He had no disposition to per- 
form miracles merely that men might be amazed. The wonder is that He 
performed so few; that He should have been so self-controlled as not to be 
always performing miracles. His miracles were for signs; they were to sig- 
nify something. They are as different from the miracles of the Middle 
Ages as can be conceived. There is no moral significance in a story of 
healing by the bones of saints. But in the miracles which Jesus works there 
is an essential moral significance, a spiritual lesson, a type of eternal life 
which the student cannot possibly overlook. John seems to have fallen into 
the habit of his Master’s mind, and thought always of His miracles in rela- 
tion to divine truth. Did Jesus heal a withered hand? Then it was an 
indication that He could cure a diseased soul. Did He by wondrous multi- 
plication of fishes and loaves feed five thousand men and women? Then it 
was a mark of the fact that He was Himself the Bread of Life. Was He 
able to open the eyes of the blind man? Then it was a sublime illustration 
of the fact that Jesus is the Light of the World. Could He cure an impo- 
tent man at the pool of Bethesda? Then it was a type of the fact that He 
could restore those who were spiritually impotent. Did He raise Lazarus 
from the dead? Then it was to prove that He was the Resurrection and 
the Life. So this story has a very close relation to the whole power of Jesus 
as “‘ Resurrection ”’ and as * Life”’. 

II. In the next place, we have here the self-vindication of Jesus on the 
basis of His filial relation to God the Father, and His essential oneness 
with Him. He is charged with a violation of the Sabbath law; it is an 
unproved accusation. Indeed, by the strictest interpretation of the Mosaic 
code He could not have been convicted. It would have been an easy thing 
to dispose of this accusation by recourse to the code and to history. On 
other occasions, when similar accusations were lodged against Him, He 
took this course, but in the present instance He does not defend Himself in 
this fashion. He ignores all such considerations, and with a simple thrust 
strikes at the core of the whole matter when He says, “‘ My Father worketh 
hitherto, and I work”. The activity which characterizes God is not limited 
by any narrow Sabbath laws which have been passed for the benefit of 
mankind. From the hour when His creative work was concluded, and He 
pronounced His work good, until this hour He has not ceased to pour Him- 
self out in the sustaining of His universe, in the impartation of life to His 
creatures, in the work of redemption for those who are lost. ‘‘ My Father 
and I are one. He worketh until now, and I work. His will is mine; His 
work is My work. At any moment I am ready at His command to do what- 
soever He desireth”. Instantly the charge of an infraction of the Sabbath 
law is dropped. His accusers pass over the whole matter, and charge Him 
with identifying Himself with God, and, therefore, with being guilty of blas- 
phemy. Their instinct was correct, their motive contemptible. It is in the 
assumption that He is God, and that life proceeds from Him inevitably, that 


THE WORKS OF JESUS— RESURRECTION. 121 


the heart of the trouble rests. But we need not discuss that subject now. 
If that is not true there is no truth in the New Testament Scriptures that one 
need hold for a single instant. And if that is not truth, it is the greatest of 
all folly that we should come together to study this Gospel. 

Passing now from this general statement of the basis on which He has 
assumed authority to impart life to men, Jesus bursts forth, first, into a 
general statement of His divine right to raise the dead and judge them, 
and then to a more particular statement, in a concrete and explicit form, of 
His rights in the moral and external domains now and forever with re- 
lation to the destiny of mankind. He virtually says to these accusers, 
“You profess to be scandalized because I am supposed to have violated 
the Sabbath laws, and because I have claimed to be divine in My own per- 
son ; what will you say when I tell you that all power is mine? that I am 
the judge of the quick and the dead, and that by My own voice I shall call 
men from the tomb, and in the end shall be the final and absolute arbiter 
of the destinies of human beings? For, as the Father raiseth up the dead 
and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will. For the 
Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son; 
that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that 
honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father which hath sent Him. 
Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word and believeth on 
Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemna- 
tion, but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you the 
hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son 
of God; and they that hear shall live”. 

III. Again, the healing of the impotent man forms a concrete illustra- 
tion in symbolism of the spiritual resurrection. ‘‘ Wilt thou be made 
whole?” is the challenge of Jesus. The man hears the question, responds 
to it, and by the expenditure of his own will, in the exercise of what we 
call faith, takes up his bed and walks; and goes out to sin no more that he 
may have no worse thing come upon him than he has been suffering these 
thirty-eight years. ‘“‘ Wilt thou be made whole?” is the demand of Jesus 
now and always. Those who hear His voice and respond to His call are 
those who live; and those who will not heed His voice are those who can- 
not live because they refuse to accept His life as a free gift. ‘‘ Wilt thou 
be made whole?” Do you want to be made sound? Are you eager to have 
life and health? ‘That is a very crucial question. It is the question which 
Jesus is always asking. And it is not everyone who is sick, and murmurs 
about it, that really wants to be well. There are many people who do not 
want to get health; and many people like to tell you of their diseases, and 
the sufferings they have experienced at the hands of many physicians, and 
the number of hospitals they have been in or visited for treatment, in order 
that they may awake in you the impulse of sympathy. And the same thing 
is true in the moral realm. Not every one who professes himself sick and 
talks about his being so needy desires to be well spiritually. Lord Byron 
developed a sort of foolish self-pity by such a method. He desired to 


122 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


describe himself as a sort of unfortunate victim of fleshly lusts, and he gloried 
in his shame. A man recently said that he would rather give ten thousand 
dollars to retain his delicious thirst for alcoholic beverages than to have 
that thirst removed. He had sunken into that insensibility which prevents 
a man from hearing the voice and responding to the call which summons 
to life. Do you want to be healed? is the challenge of Jesus. Are you 
willing to launch your personal will into the divine will, and to arise from 
the dead? They who hear the voice of the Son of God and respond, live ; 
and they who do not heed and respond are dead. 

IV. It follows naturally that judgment ensues. It is in the very fact 
of men’s attitude toward this call of Jesus. What He says in this connec- 
tion about judgment being committed to Him is simply the inevitable 
consequence of His offer of life to men, and of the position they take with 
reference to it. Perhaps you have read Fenelon’s dialogue between Ulysses 
and Grillus, the man whom Circe had turned into a hog. Ulysses wished 
to bring him back to manhood. But Grillus would not consent. He said, 


‘No, the life of a hog is so much pleasanter”. ‘‘ But’’, said Ulysses, “‘ Do 
you make no account of eloquence, poetry and music?” ‘ No, I would rather 
grunt than be eloquent like you”. ‘ But’’, asked Ulysses further, “‘ How 


can you endure this nastiness and stench?” Grillus replied, “It all de 
pends on the taste; the odor is sweeter to me than that of amber, and the 
filth than the nectar of the gods”. When men sink into the insensibility 
of degrading sin they put themselves in the place of judgment; and the 
judgment of the hereafter will base itself upon the position we have occu- 
pied in this probationary sphere. John LeFarge says, ‘‘When a man 
passes a criticism upon a picture, it is the picture that judges the man, and 
not the man who judges the picture”. The men who receive the offer of 
Christ, and pass upon it, are judged by the attitude in which they present 
themselves to His appeal. They that hear the Son of God shall live. 
Others cannot see life. Even as the impotent man at the Pool of Bethesda 
would have been helpless to the day of his death, had he not responded to 
the call of Christ to take up his bed and walk forth into the world. 

V. And now we see that, advancing from this general statement with 
regard to resurrection from spiritual deadness, Jesus addresses Himself to 
the great question of the physical resurrection. He does not say that He 
is now calling the dead from the tomb, but “the hour is coming, in which 
all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they 
that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have 
done evil unto the resurrection of damnation”. This is the supreme, the 
only satisfactory and complete argument in favor of a future life. Natura 
immortality is an unprovable hypothesis ; it may belong to us as our birth- 
right, but the Bible does not insist that this is true. And the argument 
from analogy falls to pieces in the presence of the severest scientific invest- 
igation of our day. No man who stands by the bedside of a dying friend 
and observes the process of dissolution can see anything in the phenomena 
of man’s death that differentiates it from the death of an animal. With- 


THE WORKS OF JESUS— RESURRECTION. 123 


out the resurrection of the New Testament in the person of Jesus Christ, 
there is no absolute foundation upon which one can rest a hope of the future 
life. Plato may ‘‘ reason well”; so well that some of his disciples are per- 
suaded to commit suicide in order to reach a life of bliss; but there is no 
argument from the day of Plato to our own that can support the soul that 
questions the fact of a future life. The only sure foundation of such a hope 
is the personal guarantee of Him who is “‘ Life”’, who shall some day send 
His voice thrilling through the world and call the just and unjust out of the 
tomb to receive judgment. But this promise cuts in opposite directions. 
It says that the unjust, as well as the just, shall come at Christ’s command. 
There is no escaping His summons. ‘‘ Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? 
or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, 
Thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art there. If I take 
the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even 
there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, 
‘ Surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about 
me. Yea the darkness hideth not from Thee, but the night shineth as the 
day’”. There is no escape from Him except escape in Him. There is no 
way to avoid the wrath of the Just One, except to hide under the shadow of 
His wings. Martin Luther said, ‘‘If I saw Jesus Christ standing before 
me with a drawn sword, I would still fling myself into His arms”. “ Ye will 
not come unto Me that you might have life ’”’, is the sad plaint of the Master 
of Life and Conqueror of Death. Jesus is the life, the resurrection, the 
only hope of eternal life, the judge of the quick and the dead, the appor- 
tioner of the rewards of the men who have been hearers of His voice and 
have known His love, the distributer of recompense to those who in deep, 
moral insensibility have refused to hear His voice and have chosen death 
instead of life. This is the solemn lesson of the hour. 


*THE WORKS OF JESUS. IL—JUDGMENT. 
(ST. JOHN 5: 17-30.) 
BY REV. CHARLES M. MELDEN, PH. D., D. D., 


PASTOR OF THE MATHEWSON STREET METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PROVIDENCE. 


I have been asked for an exegesis of these few verses, John 5: 17-30, 
which, in the mind of the committee, teach the important doctrine of a gen- 
eral judgment with the Lord Jesus Christ as judge. Our task would be 
simplified very greatly if we could assume either of two extreme positions, 
each of which has its advocates. Mr. Campbell Morgan declares, “‘ There 
is no warrant for preaching the final judgment at all. The messengers of 
Christ were never commissioned to do so. They were sent to preach the 
gospel, and the only reference to the fact of judgment which has any place 
in preaching is such as is necessary for urging the claims of Christ upon 
men’’. But one might as well say that the apostles were not commissioned 
to preach the new birth, the punishment of sin, the rewards of righteous- 
ness, or any other of the great doctrines. It would be interesting to hear 
this man define the “ gospel”’ of which he speaks. 

Whether the apostles understood as clearly as Mr. Morgan the meaning 
of their mission may perhaps be questioned, but it is certain that the fact of 
a general judgment had a conspicuous place in their teaching. 

Moreover, if we are to preach Christ, it is our duty to preach Him in all 
His offices, not only as priest but as prophet and king; not only as the 
atoning Saviour, but as the authoritative teacher and reigning sovereign. 
His functions, according to the Gospel, are not only to redeem but to 
instruct and govern. As ruler He is also judge, and the gospel-preaching is 
defective which does not thus present Him. 

We might do, also, as one learned essayist in these meetings has 
already done, viz.: deny that the words in vs. 28, 29 were ever uttered by 
the Master, but are an interpolation by a later hand. In that case they 
would not require an exegesis. The assurance with which some men erect 
a personal and purely subjective standard of what ought to be said, and 
reject everything which does not conform to it, is refreshing. It is an easy 
way to dispose of an unpleasant truth to say Jesus never uttered it or, if He 
did, He did not know what He was talking about. Whatever doubts these 
men may have concerning the inerrancy of the Scriptures, they seem well 
assured of their own. 

Now I am disposed to accept this passage as genuine, and for at least 
two reasons. 


* Delivered at the Fifth Conference, held at the Central Baptist Church, February ro, 1904. 


124 


THE WORKS OF JESUS—/JUDGMENT. 125 


First, its statements are in perfect accord with the teaching of the 
Synoptic Gospels and with the writings of all the apostles, as far as they 
have expressed themselves on the subject. 

In Matt. 25 : 31-33, Jesus says, ‘‘When the Son of Man shall come in 
His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the 
throne of His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He 
shall separate them one from the other asa shepherd divideth his sheep 
from the goats”. In his memorable sermon on Mars Hill, Paul declared, 
‘He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in right- 
eousness by that man whom He hath ordained, whereof He hath given 
assurance unto all men in that He hath raised Him from the dead” (Acts 
17:31). In His epistles He more than once in substance affirms that ‘‘ We 
must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ”. The revelator in 
Apocalyptic vision—‘ Saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from 
whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no 
place forthem. And * * * _ the dead, small and great, stand before 
God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is 
the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were 
written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the 
dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which 
were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works”. 
You will say, perhaps, that this is imaginative and poetical. But, taken 
in connection with the general trend of the New Testament, who that gives 
any doctrinal value to this book can doubt that the writer is describing the 
stupendous event toward which time is hurrying us all? 

The doctrine of a general judgment cannot be wrested from the New 
Testament teaching without violence. The passage before us is in harmony 
with this teaching, and is therefore presumptively genuine. 

Secondly, this passage is in harmony with the discourse of which it 
forms a part. It marks, it is true, a great advance in thought, but it isa 
natural development and not an obtrusion, an irruption, into the discussion 
in hand. This, I think, will be clear if we glance comprehensively, though 
briefly, at the entire incident. 

Our Lord had cured the impotent man at the pool known as Bethesda. 
It was on the Sabbath. Contrary to Jewish custom, at the Master’s bid- 
ding the man took up his bed and was going his way when he was accosted 
by the Jews, “‘It is the Sabbath day; it is not lawful for thee to carry thy 
bed”. He quoted the authority of Jesus, saying, ‘‘He that made me 
whole, the same said unto me, take up thy bed and walk”. Thus the con- 
troversy was shifted, and the Jews in the fierceness of their rage sought to 
slay Jesus. In justification of His act, and to substantiate His claims else- 
where made that the ‘Son of Man was Lord of the Sabbath”, He said, 
“My Father worketh hitherto and I work”. This still further inflamed 
their anger, and “They sought the more to kill Him because He had 
not only broken the Sabbath but said also that God was His Father, mak- 
ing Himself equal with God”. To the charge of lawlessness was added that 


126 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


of blasphemy. Notice the progress, also, in the defence. Jesus does not 
deny that He claims equality with the Father; on the contrary, He admits 
it and proceeds to justify Himself in so doing. He emphasizes the perfect 
accord between Himself and His Father, and then makes the still graver 
assertion, doubtless with remembrance of the recent healing in mind, “As 
the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son 
quickeneth whom He will”. 

Nothing could be more natural than to pass from this suggestion of 
quickening the dead—meaning probably the spiritually dead—awakening 
them into new life and power, as He Himself had restored the paralytic, to 
the associated thought of the judgment. The fact that the Father had given 
this great power into His hands was put forth as an additional refutation of 
the ‘charges made against Him. He was to act as God, “ That all men 
might honor the Son as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the 
Son honoreth not the Father which hath sent Him ”. 

He moves forward in the argument with a regal majesty. He, the life- 
giver and judge of men, declares that for those who hear His voice and 
respond, the great crises are passed already. They already have within 
them the beginning of eternal life and witness of their justification. ‘ Ver- 
ily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My word, and believeth on Him 
that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and cometh not into judgment; but is 
passed from death unto life. * * * The hour is coming, and now is, 
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear 
shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the 
Son to have life in Himself. And hath given Him authority to execute 
judgment also, because He is the Son of Man”. Our Lord regards His 
countrymen, and, indeed, all unregenerate men, as dead in trespasses and 
sins. Though physically alive, they are spiritually dead. They are as 
helpless as the impotent man in the porches of Bethesda. He, as the life- 
giver, stands and calls. He says to them as He said to the other, “ Wilt 
thou be made whole?” Happy, thrice happy, those who hear; for those 
who hear shall live. 

It is interesting to note here the word rendered “wilt”. It is *heleis, a 
word conveying the idea of volition, of purpose. Itis not dou/ei, simple 
desire. It is as though He sought in this man a purpose born of faith to 
respond to His life-giving power. He found what He sought, the word was 
spoken, and that weak and pain-racked body thrilled and glowed with the 
new life. 

He stands and calls, “If any man thirsts, come unto Me, drink and 
live”. If His words find response, if any hear, they shall live. If they fail 
to hear, they continue in the embrace of death. 

Thus Jesus judges the world today. By their attitude toward Him men 
are justified and live, or are condemned and die. “ For this is the condem- 
nation that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than 
light because their deeds were evil. Every one that doeth evil hateth the 
light, neither cometh to the light lest his deeds should be reproved. But he 


THE WORKS OF JESUS— JUDGMENT. 127 


that doeth truth cometh to the light that his deeds may be made manifest 
that they are wrought in God”. Life is a continuous judgment day. By 
their acceptance or by their rejection of the light men are determining their 
destiny. 

This is the stupendous claim put forth by the Saviour. By their relation 
to Him as life-giver and judge, the fate of men is settled. It is not strange 
that He detected incredulity and wonder in the faces of His hearers at such 
a tremendous assertion; but He does not hesitate; He does not soften or 
mitigate in the slightest the significance of His words. On the contrary He 
advances yet farther; there is a constant crescendo in His claims. “Are you 
startled at what { have said? Does it shock you that I claim to judge those 
now on earth? ‘‘ Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in which all that 
are in their graves shall hear My voice and shall come forth; they that 
have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, 
unto the resurrection of damnation. The voice which now speaks to you, 
and which many of you refuse to hear, shall sound through the regions 
where dwell the departed, and hearing, they shall obey its imperative com- 
mand and come forth to receive at My hand their eternal award”. This 
marks the culmination of the Saviour’s work as life-giver and judge. From 
the act of supreme authority—judgment, He passes to the supreme act of 
power—the resurrection of the dead. Then will the universe receive final 
demonstration of His sublime statement, ‘‘I am the resurrection and the 
life; he that believeth in Me though he were dead, yet shali he live; and 
whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die”’. 

Now [ submit that there is nothing violent or irrelevant in this reference 
by our Lord to the general judgment in this discourse. It comes in the 
natural development of His discussion with His enemies. His claims being 
challenged, He defended them. His authority to supersede their petty 
traditions rests upon His oneness with the Father. His Father worketh 
hitherto, why should not He work? He was one with the Father. He was 
entrusted with divine authority and power until the honor of the Father 
was indissolubly inwrought with His. 

As Godet says: ‘This work of moral and physical restoration, carried 
on hitherto by God, passes henceforth into the hands of Jesus but gradually 
and according to the measure of His growing capacity. Till His baptism 
He had wrought only human works. From that time He begins to work 
isolated miracles of bodily and spiritual resurrection, specimens of His 
great future work. From the time of His elevation to glory, He realizes by 
Pentecost the moral resurrection of humanity; and finally by His return on 
the day of His advent, and by His victory over the last enemy, death, which 
shall be its consequence, He will work in the physical domain, the universal 
resurrection. Then only will the work of the Father have passed wholly 
into His hands”. 

Jesus, as life-giver and judge must be no less than God, manifest in the 
flesh. As one has said: ‘‘ The more we ponder the stupendous claim which 
Christ makes, the more must we feel that it is superhuman authority which 


128 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


speaks to us here, or superhuman arrogance”. He, Himself, seemed to 
realize the force of this dilemma, for He said: ‘If I bear witness of 
Myself, My witness is not true”. Not that He falsified in His claims, but 
that He did not meet the demands of Jewish law by which a thing must 
be established by two or more witnesses. ‘‘I am willing”, He says, “to 
submit to this requirement. I have My witnesses and will produce them. 

‘“Ye sent unto John, to him in whose light ye were willing to rejoice. 
He bore witness to Me, it is true, but I have a greater witness than he. 

‘* First of all, there are My works. They clearly demonstrate My divine 
office and power. Nicodemus was right; no man can do the works which 
I do except God be with Him. Ye are absolutely inexcusable for not 
receiving Me. If I had not done among you the works which none other 
man had done ye had not had sin, but now ye have no cloak for your sin. 
Now ye have both seen and hated both Me and My Father”. Jesus as the 
divine ambassador brought with Him His credentials. Whatever weight 
may now be given the evidential value of miracles, it is doubtless true that 
He regarded them as a mark of His authority as the Son of God. 

Secondly. The Father bears witness. ‘‘The Father which sent Me 
hath borne witness to Me”. Our Lord here refers to His baptism, when as 
the Spirit descended upon Him, the Father’s voice declared: ‘This is My 
beloved Son, hear ye Him”. He must have referred also to that marvelous 
scene upon the mountain, when Moses, the law-giver and Elijah, greatest of 
the prophets, representing the old dispensation, came out of heaven long 
enough to do homage to Him who was to supersede the law, and in whom 
the prophecies were to find their fulfilment. These representatives of a 
passing era faded away, leaving before the amazed apostles the solitary 
figure of their Lord, while in their ears rang the words: “ This is My beloved 
Son in Whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him”. 

Thirdly. Our Saviour brings forward as a final witness the Jewish 
Scriptures. In Moses, in the prophets, and indeed in all the Scriptures is 
found testimony as to the character and work of the Messiah. The portrait 
there drawn finds its original in Jesus of Nazareth. So clear and striking 
and accurate the likeness that Moses himself, in whom the Jews trusted, 
would condemn them for rejecting their Saviour. ‘There is one that 
accuseth you, even Moses, in whom yetrust. For had ye believed Moses 
ye would have believed Me, for he wrote of Me”. 

I have thus simply indicated what I conceive to be the teaching of this 
passage. If I am correct, every day is in a sense a judgment day. Jesus 
is speaking to men now engrossed in business, consumed by ambition, 
drunken with pleasures, sodden in sin. He cries to them: “ Wilt thou be 
made whole?” If they hear, they shall live. Oh that His voice might be 
heard above the din of trade, the rush of commerce, the shouts and laughter 
of revelry! Alas! how many refuse to listen. Like the Jews they would 
away with Him. Like the Jews, too, all such call down unutterable woes 
upon themselves. His blood be on us and our children forever! 

His word is true. “When the Son of Man shall come in glory, and 


THE WORKS OF JESUS. —/JUDGMENT. 129 


all His holy angels with Him, then shall He sit on the throne of His 
glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations; and He shall sep- 
arate them one from another as the shepherd separateth the sheep from 
the goats; and He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on 
the left”. Ah! that right hand and left hand! ‘You seem, sir”, said Mrs. 
Adams to Dr. Johnson, when the fear of death and the judgment lay heavy 
upon him, ‘“ You seem to forget the merits of our Redeemer”. ‘‘Madam’’, 
said the honest old man, ‘‘I do not forget the merits of my Redeemer; but 
my Redeemer has said that He will set some on His right hand and some 
on His left”. It were well if men were to remember that there is a right 
hand and a left. There is inextricable confusion here, but there will be a 
separation there. It is sometimes impossible here to discern between those 
who serve God and those who do not; but then every mask will be torn 
off and every dissembler revealed in his true character. I have stood in the 
dimly lighted room of a photographer watching with great interest the 
development of plates. As they lie side by side there is no apparent differ- 
ence between them. But when they are dipped into the developing fluid, a 
change gradually takes place. On this appears the sweet face of a pure and 
innocent child; on that the harsh and angular features of one who has seen 
much of toil and hardship; on another the coarse and bloated countenance 
of a sensualist; and on still another the fierce and brutish expression of the 
hardened criminal. Under the magic of the photographer’s art, every 
characteristic is transcribed with literal exactness upon the sensitive plate 
and faithfully and permanently preserved. Thus in the blazing light of the 
judgment, men will stand revealed as they are and not as they seem. 

Ah! that right hand and left hand! Only two classes; only two 
destinies. Every man must stand in one of these classes. Every man must 
enter upon one or the other of the two destinies, which will be decided by 
his attitude toward the life-giver and judge. By a fixed and unalterable 
gravitation every man will go to his own place, whither his affinities bear 
him. One has beautifully and powerfully said: ‘‘ There are two twilights— 
the twilight of evening and the twilight of morning; and therefore God’s 
question to us is not how much light have we, but which way do we face, to 
the night or to the day? Not what art thou, but what wilt thou, is the 
supreme question. It is the answer to this which sets some on the right 
hand and some on the left”’. 





* THE SECRET OF JESUS’ LIFE. 
(St. JOHN 5:30.) 
tBY REV. JOHN BALCOM SHAW, D. D., 


PASTOR OF THE WEST END PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEW YORK. 


There are four Scriptures, all the sayings of Jesus and all found in the 
Fourth Gospel, which define for me the basic secret of Jesus’ life. John 
6: 38—‘‘ For I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will 
of Him that sent Me”—doing the will of God the gurfose of Christ’s life. 
John 4: 34—“‘ My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me’’—doing the 
will of God the pleasure of Christ’s life, its very sustenance and inspiration, 
its enjoyment and satisfaction. John 5: 30—‘‘ Because I seek not Mine own 
will, but the will of the Father which sent Me ’—doing the will of God, the 
pursuit or principle of Christ's life. John 8:29—‘I do always those things 
that please Him ’’—doing the will of God the gractice of Christ’s life. 

This was our Lord’s unique and unqualified claim. Was it substantiated ? 
Did He give full proof to the world that doing God’s will was the purpose, 
the pleasure, the pursuit and the practice of His life? That He always dili- 
gently sought to know, and earnestly set Himself to do God’s will is beyond 
dispute. A study of His prayer-life fully attests this. ‘“‘ Strong Son of God” 
though He was, aware of His appointed mission in the world as He must 
have been, yet was He constantly asking His Father what direction His 
way should take or what turns in the way already taken He should make. 
“What wilt Thou have Meto do?” was His perpetual inquiry. If ever any- 
one had less need than another to pray, was it not Jesus Christ? And yet 
we find that no one living upon our earth ever prayed so much as did He. 
He alone has perfectly obeyed the apostolic injunction, ‘Pray without 
ceasing’’. Prayer stood closely related to all the great events of His life— 
His baptism, His temptation, His transfiguration, His agony in the garden, 
His crucifixion. The night before He chose the twelve, He was until morn- 
ing in the mountain alone with His Father. When the Roman guard came 
to arrest Him He was by Himself in prayer, and did He not die with a 
prayer upon His lips? What a testimony to His prayer-life it was that the 
disciples who took the walk to Emmaus with Him the day of His resurrection 
did not identify Him till they heard His voice in prayer. We sometimes 
feel that at best we are but children and dare not stir a step alone. This 
was Jesus’ characteristic and continuous attitude. He was supremely the 
son of solitude, yet He was preeminently a man among men, ever going 
about doing good. 


* Delivered at the Fifth Conference, held at the Central Baptist Church, February ro, 1904. 
+ Now Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Illinois. 


130 


THE SECRET OF JESUS’ LIFE. 131 


This constant converse with His Father was the source of His wisdom, 
His patience and poise, His steadfastness and strength, His cheerfulness 
and courage. It was this which made 

“His face a mirror of His holy mind, 


His mind a temple for alllovely things to flock to 
And inhabit”. 


Living such an uninterrupted prayer-life as this, He came to know the 
will of God fully and explicitly, and His life was lived with one sole com- 
manding passion,—to make that will known to men. The words He spoke, 
the deeds He wrought, the influence breathing itself forth from His person, 
His character and life, were but the utterance, the exaltation of that will. In 
whatsoever capacity He appears, as the Messiah of Matthew, or the servant 
of Mark, or the universal Saviour of Luke, or the divine Son of God of 
John, He is everywhere and always the synonym, the embodiment, the 
interpretation of the will of God—the declaration of what God thinks, what 
God desires, what He purposes and what He delights in—in a word what 
God is and what He desires man to be. 


“On one great mission bent, 
He sped for God, forever unencumbered 
Of earthly clogs, whereby our souls are numbered 
In glory excellent”. 


There can be no question, then, but what He always sought to know 
and follow the will of the Father. That stands forever true. But did He 
perfectly do that will? In other words, it is beyond dispute that doing the 
will of God was the purpose, the pleasure and the pursuit of His life. Was 
this the actual practice of Jesus? 

1. The consciousness of Christ is no slight or uncertain factor in this 
problem. All the laws of psychology must, do give it emphasis. A sane, 
true, high soul, such as Jesus confessedly was, could have had none other 
than a trustworthy consciousness. When, therefore, looking into the face 
of His Father, He said: “‘I do always the things that please Him;” and 
again, ‘‘ My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me”’, He established 
the strongest possible presumption in favor of His claim. 

2. Another test is His Father’s unqualified approval of Him. This 
approval would, of course, not have been given if He had failed to do the 
will of God. That approval is everywhere implied, and the fact that only 
once did Jesus feel Himself without it, and that when circumstances for 
which He was not responsible had clouded His consciousness, strongly 
confirms the implication. Twice, however, this approval was explicitly 
‘spoken by the Father from heaven. First at the baptism: ‘‘ This is My 
beloved Son in whom I am well pleased”, a word which doubtless covered 
the whole of His life up to that point and is a suggestive key which unlocks 
for us the so-called ‘‘ hidden years”’; and again at the transfiguration, when, 
as St. Peter tells us, “‘ He received from God the Father, honor and glory, 
when there came such a voice to Him from the excellent glory, This is My 
beloved Son in whom I am well pleased”. 


132 THE GOSPEL OF S1. JOHN. 


3. But better than His self-consciousness even, still better than His 
Father’s implied or spoken approval, was the sinless life He set before the 
world. His sinlessness was more than a self-preferred claim—it was an 
accepted fact. No man did convict Him of sin. The prince of this world 
did come but found nothing in Him. His contemporaries testified to His 
purity, and succeeding ages have confirmed the testimony, until an apos- 
trophe like that of our Sidney Lanier to-day awakens universal applause: 


“ But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign seer of time, 
But Thee, O poets’ poet, wisdom’s tongue, 
But Thee, O man’s best man, O love’s best love, 
O perfect life in perfect labor writ, 
O all men’s Comrade, Servant, King or Priest,— 
What 2 or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, 
What least defect, or shadow of defect, 
What rumor, tattled by an enemy, 
Or inference loose, what lack of grace, 
Even in torture’s grasp, or sleep’s, or death’s— 
Oh! what amiss may I forgive in Thee, 
Jesus, good Paragon, Thou Crystal Christ?” 


In view of these facts are we not justified in accepting it as an absolute 
fact that Jesus did perfectly obey His Father, and that His claim is thus 
firmly established, that doing the will of God was not only the purpose, the 
pleasure and the pursuit of His life, but also its actual and constant practice, 
No other soul was as equal to Wasson’s quaint confession as was the Man 
of Galilee: 

“Tf I would pray, 
I’ve naught to say, 
But this: That God would be God still. 
For grace to give, 
So still to give, 
And sweeter than my wish His will”. 


Is not our next logical question this: What was the personal, practical 
product of such perfect practicing of the will divine? What sort of a char- 
acter-structure did it rear? What type or pattern did it leave to the world? 
In a word, what kind of a life did it produce? Theoretically, the effect of 
such a practicing of the will of God should have been the ideal, the perfect. 
If the will of God is the best possible will, if it justifies the Bible’s repre- 
sentations of it as ‘‘ That good and acceptable and perfect will’ of God, if 
John’s dictum be true, ‘‘He that doeth the will of God abideth forever ’”’, 
then three things may be demanded of such a person: 

1. That the perfect doing of that perfect will of God should produce 
the highest possible character. Why? Because God is the Creator, and 
only He can make such laws, which, when obeyed, will insure one’s being 
its highest end. 

2. That the perfect doing of the perfect will of God should bring the 
greatest possible happiness. God is the great Father and He would make 
only those laws for His children, which, on being obeyed, would contribute 
to their fullest happiness. 


THE SECRET OF JESUS’ LIF. 133 


3. That the perfect doing of the perfect will of God should result in 
the longest possible continuance of being. God is eternal and legislates, 
therefore, only for eternity. God is man’s great benefactor, and, where His 
will is not intercepted, must preserve my soul “‘ From this time forth and 
even forevermore”. To put it succinctly, complete perfection, complete 
pleasure and complete permanence must follow from the full surrender of 
the human will to the will divine. 

What do we find to have been the case in our Lord’s life? Did He not 
fulfil each of these three great conditions? He was not only the noblest, 
the purest, the holiest character of time, but He is the only perfect man 
our race has produced. Human imagination can picture to itself no higher 
order of being than He. Do not the Norsemen’s title of ‘‘ The White 


Christ”, and Lanier’s representation of Him as “The Crystal Christ” 
command universal consent? 


What of the second tests Did not perfect obedience to the Father’s 
will yield Him complete happiness? He was “The man of sorrows”, but 
He was “Anointed with the oil of gladness” above His fellows. He was 
able to rise above more trial, temptation, opposition and hatred than has 
come to any other being on our earth, and yet He was calm, serene, brave, 
and glad through it all. ‘Who, for the joy that was set before Him, 
endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down on the right hand 
of the throne of God”. 

Apply the third test—the longest possible existence. Is He not by all 
odds the first of the immortals? Was not death powerless to hold Him? 
Is He not now alive forevermore? Has He not the keys of hades and 
death? He who rests his faith in Him may sing with the utmost confidence : 


“To Thy beyond no fear I give, 
Because Thou livest, I live. 
Unsleeping Friend, why should I wake 
Troublesome thought to take 
For any strange tomorrow? In Thy hand 
Days and eternities like flowers expand 


“Odors from blossoming worlds unknown 
Across my path are blown; 
Thy robes trail myrrh and spice 
From farthest paradise; 
I walk through Thy fair universe with Thee, 
And sun mein Thine immortality ”. 


And now, having reached this high point, where are we? We have 
looked upon His claim that God’s will was the guiding star, nay, the rising 
sun, of His life; we have examined the facts upon which that master claim 
rests, and assured ourselves that it was warrantable and conclusive. We 
have scrutinized the effect of Christ’s obedience and found it yielded a 
normal product, answering the soul’s threefold aspiration for perfection, 
pleasure and permanence. Are we not, therefore, face to face with the 
question as to what is the essential, practical import of all this for us? 
Surely it can have but one explicit and ethical meaning for us. It is this: 


134 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


that if we would come out at a like goal, we must take the same path Jesus 
chose. Do we want to attain to the highest character? Do we want abid- 
ing happiness? Do we crave a true immortality? All this has but one 
secret—doing the will of the Father in heaven. Until Christ’s secret is ours 
we shall not fulfil the genius of our being; we shall chafe and fret, be ill at 
ease and generally unhappy; and the life within us, instead of expanding, 
will grow shallow and negative and gradually die out. 


“ Have you ever thought, my friend, 
As you daily toil and plod 
In the busy paths of men, 
How still are the ways of God? 


““ Have you ever paused in the din 
Of traffic’s insistent cry, 
To think of the calm in the cloud, 
Of the peace in your glimpse of the sky? 


“Go out in the silent fields, 
That quietly yield you meat, 
And let them rebuke your noise, 
Whose patience is still and sweet”. 


Ah! this is our difficulty. Our wills are in command, and not God’s 
will. Victor Hugo once said, “‘ Men do not lack strength, but will”. It is 
God’s will they lack. By so much as that will is not ours, by so much our 
characters are defective, our hearts discordant, our lives de-vitalized. No 
one has got closer to this truth, it would seem to me, than our Quaker poet, 
who has in a single verse forever signalized the truth: 

“ And so I sometimes think our prayers 
Might well be merged in one, 
And nest and perch and hearth and church 
Repeat, ‘ Thy will be done’”. 

This step but leads to another. Having come face to face with this 
secret of secrets, we ask most eagerly how we may make it ours. How 
may we be sure that we have taken God’s will? Wedo well to ask that 
question, for there is a great deal of talk these days about absolute surrender, 
which is ignorant, unscriptural, unphilosophical, and generally wide of the 
mark, In many quarters the word surrender has become scarcely more 
than a shibboleth. People talk glibly of surrender who do not know what 
surrender means. 

(2) To begin with, it is not a thing of the emotions, but solely of the 
will. It is, therefore, a step to be taken deliberately, dispassionately, and, 
above all, positively. I have known people to declare their surrender when 
they were under excited feeling, who were at the time as little capable of 
taking so serious a step as a child. 

(4) Itis a thing of fact and not fancy. A prominent religious teacher, 
speaking to a great conference of Christian people, a few years ago, sug- 
gested that only when one could sign his name to a blank sheet of paper 
and hand it back to God for Him to fill in as He chose, was he really justi- 
fied in professing surrender. I submit that this is a specious test, and its 


THE SECRET OF JESUS’ LIFE. 135 


effect most unwholesome. Imagine Christ working Himself up into such 
an unreal state. He dealt with the will of God as it came to Him at the 
time, and not as it might address itself to Him at some future juncture. 
The call which God’s will makes to us in the present is the only true test of 
surrender. God has put me in a hard place; do I accept it from Him and 
in no way fight against the appointment? My position is not what I like, 
but God keeps me init. Am TI content therewith? My life is an aimless, 
circumscribed one—a tread mill, a tedious round, the dead level of the 
commonplace. Am I willing to keep on and be cheerful, if God does not 
turn me upon another path? 

(c) And this, mark you well, is only the first step—the beginning. 
Surrender, as I understand it, is a compound act. I had almost said a 
complex act. It is a ladder of three rungs, set far apart and mounted only 
by long, hard strides. The first rung is swbmission to God’s will—resigna- 
tion, as we more commonly express it. The second is obedience to God’s 
will. Not merely accepting it negatively, as if there were no other alterna- 
tive, but giving ourselves gladly, fully, loyally, to its fulfilment. The third 
is exa/ting God’s will—accounting it and rejoicing in it as the best possible 
will. Faber was standing on this top rung when he breathed that immortal 
prayer: 

“ T worship thee, sweet will of God, 
And all thy ways adore; 


And every day I live, I seem 
To love thee more and more. 


“ He always wins who sides with God; 
To him no chance is lost. 
God’s will seems sweetest to him when 
It triumphs at his cost. 


“Tl that He blesses is our good, 
And unblest good is ill, 
And all is right that seems most wrong, 
If it be His sweet will”. 


How many of us have brought our feet to that rung? Until we have, 
we cannot make claim to full surrender to the will of God, but if we have 
reached that high and holy station, we are fast becoming our truest and best 
selves ; it will be easy to be brave and sweet and reposeful, and natural for 
us to be happy; and we shall rise above all ordinary, temporal limitations, 
passing out of the bondage of the material into the glorious life and liberty 
of the Son of God. 


“ To be made with Thee one spirit, 
Is the boon I longingly ask. 
To have no bars ’twixt my soul and Thine, 
Myself, Thy servant, for any task. 
Life, life, I may enter through Thee, the door, 
Saved and sheltered forevermore”’. 


“FAITH IN CHRIST DEMANDED BY GOD AND THE SPRING OF 
RELIGIOUS ACTION. 


(St. JOHN 6:29.) 
BY REV. NATHAN E. WoonD, D. Be 


PRESIDENT OF NEWTON THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION, NEWTON CENTRE, MASs. 


It is needless for me to enter into introductions. You have already, in 
this course of study and addresses, had the Gospel of John, the “‘ Pearl of 
the Gospels”’, analyzed by competent, scholarly and devout men. I said 
devout men, because it remains forever true that, “‘ If any man willeth to do 
His will, he shall know of the teaching whether it is of God” (John 7:17). 
Devoutness is a key which unlocks the choicest treasures of such a Gospel 
as that of John. One must sit fixedly with him in his quiet chambers of 
meditation, and in the atmosphere of peace, if one would think his way into 
the heart of his Gospel. The simple historic facts could be somewhat easily 
narrated, but such an interpretation of them, and such a philosophy of 
them, and such a living of them over again as John gives could come only 
out of a heart and mind which had long been occupied by Jesus Christ. 
The facts are given, but they are the facts explained after long pondering in 
the luminous presence of the Holy Spirit. His Gospel is peculiarly, there- 
fore, food and drink to the soul which hungers and thirsts after Christ. 

I will proceed at once to my assigned service and theme which was 
phrased for me, ‘‘ Faith in Christ Demanded by God and the Spring of 
Religious Action”, John 6:29—‘‘ This is the work of God, that ye believe 
on Him whom He hath sent”’. 

There is a kind of faith which Jesus both commends and commands as 
an indispensable prerequisite or condition in order to His healing of men’s 
infirmities, but which, in so far as we have any evidence, is not the saving 
faith through which the soul is knit to Christ. Significantly, it occurs always 
in connection with miracles of healing. 

The Roman Centurion (Matt. 8:10) is emphatically commended for his 
faith in expecting the healing of his servant, and yet there is no evidence 
that he was then or became afterward a disciple of Christ. His faith was 
not of the kind which knits the soul to Christ as Saviour and Lord. The 
men who brought the palsied man (Matt.9:2) and let him down before 
Christ to be healed, were also strongly commended for their faith, although 
there is no evidence that they were in any sense disciples of Christ. Indeed, 
the circumstances point inferentially and strongly to the fact that they were 
not disciples, but only a part of the great multitude who had seen the miracles 


* Delivered at the Third Conference, held at the Beneficent Congregational Church, December g, 1903. 


136 


FAITH IN CHRIST. 137 


of Christ in other places. The two blind men whose history is given in 
Matt. 9: 27-31, were given sight with the words, ‘According to your faith be 
it done unto you”’. 

Jesus had previously asked them, “‘ Believe ye that I am able to do this?” 
His ability to give them sight was the only point on which their faith fast- 
ened itself. There is no evidence that they received any other benefit from 
Christ than that of eyesight. Apparently they were not joined to Him in 
discipleship, although they did afterwards spread abroad His fame as a 
miracle worker who had special ability to give blind men their sight. Blind 
Bartimeus (Mark 10: 46-52) also had a faith which centered in his belief in 
Christ’s ability to give him sight, but there is no convincing evidence that 
his faith embraced Christ in any inwardly saving sense. It is a mere possi- 
bility that v. 52 may indicate some form of discipleship when it says, ‘‘And 
straightway he received his sight and followed Him in the way’. All of 
these are illustrations of a faith which our Lord commended and without 
which He would not perform His miracles. It was a condition required of 
man but was of a sort (sud generis) which must be described or defined by 
the results affected through it. 

What; then, is this faith and wherein does it differ from that faith 
which is always allied with inward union with Christ in salvation? This 
faith rests on evidences of miracle working which they had seen or had 
heard reported in definite details. They believed, on the ground of what 
they had seen and heard, that Jesus had ability to heal, and this confident 
assent to His power was their faith. It did not bind them to discipleship. 
It did not reach a state of soul-surrender to Christ, nor a vital union of the 
soul with its rightful Lord. It did not involve an inward moral obedience of 
heart and life to the rule of Christ. They were not, in any evangelical 
sense, believers in Christ. 

But yet this faith, as far as it went, rested on the same grounds as the 
higher faith, which is both the condition and the expression of the regener- 
ated life. Both kinds of faith alike rest on evidence, the first kind on 
evidence of the ability or power of Christ, the second kind not only on the 
power of Christ, but on the perfectness of His moral character, on His claim 
to be divine, and on His ability to give eternal life. Ifseveral instances had 
been definitely reported to the blind men, and especially if they had been 
witnesses to a few alleged cures, where the King had healed men, they 
would have believed in the ability of the King to heal, somewhat regardless 
of what sort of a moral character the King might possess. I do not see 
that the faith of these men implied any assent to the moral character of 
Christ, or any acceptance of His divine claims. It reached only to the point 
that He had ability to heal, as was abundantly attested by evidences of 
such healing already accomplished among the people. 

Now saving faith rests on this evidence also, but goes so far beyond it 
as to give it a wholly different and unique quality. It assents to His ability 
to heal, His character as Holy and perfect, His claim to be the Son of 
God, and sucha voluntary embracing of Christ, as issues in a submission 


138 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


of all the will and the life to the authority and the rule of Christ. The first 
sort of faith is that ordinary confidence which arises upon presentation of 
certain evidences, which seem reasonable, that a man has power or ability. 
Such faith may lead one to cast one’s self on that ability for help, at least 
to the necessary extent. It may be for physical healing only as in these 
illustrations from the Gospels. It does not imply any radical change in the 
inner life or in the outward conduct. 

The second sort of faith is in the sphere of the moral life where there 
is voluntary assent to the truth that there can be but one ruler, lawgiver 
and Lord, and that one, Jesus Christ, to whom the soul yields unhesitating 
obedience and love. This faith means a radical change of both inner 
life and outward conduct. It is the invariable accompanyer of the regener- 
ating work of the Holy Spirit, and expresses the new attitude of the soul 
toward its new found Saviour and Lord. 

I have been thus careful to analyze these two sorts of faith and to 
differentiate them because they are both still present in human life as 
much as when our Lord was here in the flesh and dwelt among us. Men 
may believe that Jesus Christ is able to do what He says that He can do, 
and even assent to His claim to be divine, and assent to His miracle- 
working ability, and this faith may be a very genuine one of its sort, but 
still fall far short of that faith which joins the soul to Christ in a vital union, 
so that a man may say, ‘‘I am in Christ’, and “It is no longer I that live 
but Christ that liveth in me; and that life which I now live in the flesh, I live 
in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God” (Galatians 2:20). This kind 
of faith is more than simple intellectual credence. It is indeed a voluntary 
assent to Christ, but is not that highest assent whose expression is loyal and 
loving obedience. It is so different in degree as to be practically different 
in kind from the faith which is the evidence of a Christian believer’s 
“union with Christ”. It is not evangelical faith. 

A second though inadequate conception of faith is that given in 
Hebrews 11:1. ‘‘ Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction 
of.things not seen’’. This is often supposed to be in the nature of an exact 
definition. In reality it describes but one aspect of faith. The remainder 
of the chapter, in which is the muster-roll of heroes of the Kingdom of God, 
shows just what characteristic of faith was in the writer’s mind when he 
wrote this so-called definition. These heroes were in the midst of great 
difficulties. They met almost insurmountable obstacles. They suffered 
continual contumely and obloquy. They were robbed of their earthly 
possessions. They were hunted, persecuted, and despoiled of the things 
which minister to the outward comfort of life. In their constant distresses 
and deprivations, they saw by faith “‘ things” which should be their own 
possessions where “there was none to molest or make afraid’”’, and other 
things which had no material form, and hence could not be seen as could 
the things here and now. Their faith grasped and embraced these things 
which God held in reserve for them after life’s weary struggle was over. So 
vivid was this faith, that these things seemed to them already in their 


FAITH IN CHRIST. 139 


possession, although they were only ‘“‘ hoped for” and ‘‘not seen” as yet. 
“« For they that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after 
a country of their own” (Heb. 11: 14). 

Now it is true that faith may grasp things, seen or unseen, but that is 
only one characteristic of it, and by no means describes its true nature. It 
is a superficial description and was never meant to define the essential 
nature of faith. In so far as the writer intended to cover one phase of faith, 
it covers it adequately, but it is not an adequate definition for the whole 
of it. Hence, when people often express the hope or expectation of a 
heavenly home, the enjoyment of heavenly things, the possession of heavenly 
estates, and other supernal equipments, and fancy that their faith grasps 
these so certainly as to furnish reasonable ground for obtaining them, they 
labor under an utter misconception of what true faith is, both in its nature 
and in its objects. Many modern Christians have their whole foreground of 
faith filled with “things hoped for” which are better than what they now 
possess ; things which will give them greater comforts than they now enjoy ; 
things which will change poverty into wealth, and want into affluence ; 
things which will stay by them without being looked after ;—in a word, faith 
has for its object ‘‘ things hoped for”. Now this isa wholly inadequate 
description of faith. 

The same writer gives a far clearer and more essential description of 
faith when he says, ‘‘ By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the 
king ; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible” (Heb. 11:27). This 
is a clear recognition of the personal element in faith, which unites heart 
to heart, soul to soul, person to person. Moses laid hold on God, and rested 
in Him, with whole confidence that God would take care of things, and 
would provide for him both in the matter of his safety from the wrath of 
the king, and also in the providential guiding of his steps. God was the 
source of his strength to endure, and the object of his faith. This state 
ment, therefore, uncovers and discloses what I conceive to be the primal 
and essential principle in faith. 

The word faith (fzs¢7s) does not occur in the Gospel of John, and occurs 
but once in his Epistles. ‘‘And this is the victory that hath overcome the 
world, even our faith” (1 John 5:4). The word occurs frequently in every 
other book of the New Testament, except in the writings of John. It has 
its most numerous use in the Epistles of Paul, who writes it almost one 
hundred and fifty times, exclusive of the Epistle tothe Hebrews. The word 
faith must certainly have been a very familiar everyday word on the lips of 
the early Christian disciples, if we may judge by this frequent use of it in the 
New Testament writings. Hence its entire absence from the writings of 
John, with the single exception, must require a careful explanation based 
on an analysis of the psychology of the religious experience. 

The one time when he uses it would seem to be a case where his pen 
slipped into the use of the word which was so familiar to all about him, but 
which was not his own habitual and deliberate mode of conceiving that 
relation of the soul to God in Christ which is called faith. I am the more 


140 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


persuaded of this explanation because he proceeds instantly, in the very 
next sentence (v. 5), to emphasize his own usual idea of the nature and 
action of faith. “And who is he that overcometh the world but he that 
believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” In other words, John does not 
view faith as an abstract thing, or as a definable entity. But while he does 
not use the word faith (f/s/7s) excepting the one time, he does use the verb to 
believe (fzstevo) more than a hundred times. Hence it would appear that 
his conception of faith holds in it that subtle shade of difference which 
exists between a noun and its cognate verb. He thinks of it always in the 
spirit and mould which are characteristic of a verb. The noun faith is 
abstract and definitional of an entity. The verb “to believe” has in it 
action, movement, life, and especially in view of its supreme object. It is 
impossible to imagine John, with his modes of thought, writing such a state- 
ment of faith as that in Heb. 11:1. It is wholly foreign both to his exper- 
ience and to his point of view. His thought lies in the other hemisphere. 
He does not look into the soul of man to find and analyze faith. Ge 
looks first at Jesus Christ, whom he sees luminous, gracious, redeeming, 
almighty, and then secondly at the soul leaping forth to embrace Him and 
appropriate Him. Hence it seems to me that John’s conception of faith 
is more closely allied to life, action, vital union, than it is even to the intel- 
lectual perception of the truth, however clear. 

It is easy to place the ictus on either of these two sides of faith. The 
perceptional side, with all its clear vision of Christ and the glorious power 
and passion of His person, may seem the most important side; or the side 
of impulse and life, which spring forth in fruitful currents from the knowing 
of Christ, may seem the most emphatic to the man who is in closest relations 
with his fellow man. Iam unable toaccept the statement of Professor William 
Sanday, of Oxford, although I have the profoundest respect for his scholarly 
opinions, when he says, ‘‘ Compared with St. Paul’s conception, we may say 
that faith with St. John is rather contemplative and philosophic, where with 
St. Paul it is active and enthusiastic” (Sanday, on Romans, p. 32). This 
seems to me an interesting and curious illustration of the method of criti- 
cism on subjective grounds. We form a preconception of a man’s mode of 
life or of his personal characteristics, and then compel the interpretation 
or description of all his thinking or acting to lie in that mould. 

We forget that man is almost infinitely diversified in his ways of mental 
approach to a subject as well asin his mental moods. He will, indeed, 
have his usual method of thought, but it will be broken in upon again and 
again, and the unusual will usurp its place. John was a meditative and 
philosophically inclined man, but that does not preclude ‘his thought from 
being cast in forms of intense action. He conceives activity, however, 
from the side of the inward sources and states rather than from the side of 
outward deeds, and especially does he conceive faith from the view point 
of its object, Jesus Christ, rather than from the view point of faith as a pos- 
session of the soul. 

Leaving, then, for the time Paul’s conception of faith, I should say 


FAITH IN CHRIST. 141 


that John’s conception was not at all what Professor Sanday suggests, but 
rather the exact opposite. It is active, moving, living, and puts its emphasis 
on the life side of faith, or in other words, faith is the activity of a soul 
which is steadfastly putting itself in harmony with God. The one impres- 
sion which the writings of John make upon me is that faith is the expression 
of a life at work in all holy ways, and that faith in Jesus Christ is a holy 
living with Christ as both the supreme source and the supreme goal. Paul 
in his keener analysis more frequently describes faith as “ the living bond, 
the secret point of union between Christ and the individual soul, the wzzo 
mystica”. 

But we must scrutinize more carefully the varied uses of the word faith 
in the New Testament. 

(a) It is used to describe the body of Christian doctrine. 

‘““ If so be that ye continue in the faith ” (Col. 1:23). 

‘One Lord, one faith, one baptism”’ (Eph. 4:5). 

“The faith which was once for all delivered to the 
saints’’ (Jude 3). 

(4) It signifies an act of the soul toward these doctrines. It may be 
favorable or adverse. 

“So belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of 
Christ”? (Rom. 10:17). 

“Thou believest that God isone; thou doest well: the demons 
also believe, and shudder ”’ (James 2: 19). 

(c) It signifies a favorable act of the soul toward the promises of God. 
This is the familiar use in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and especially in 
connection with the glorious roster of the heroes of the faith in the eleventh 
chapter. 

(dz) It signifies an attitude of the soul toward the works of God, ase. ¢., 
Miracles. ‘‘ Though ye believe not Me, believe the works” (John 10:38). 
“‘ By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of 
God” (Heb. 11 :3). 

(e) It signifies confidence that what is asked in prayer God will grant. 
“ But let him ask in faith nothing doubting” (James 1 :6). 

“And the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick” (James 
5:15). In James, as one might anticipate, the aspect of 
faith which is outstanding to his thought is the things or 
works which are brought to pass through’it. He sees and 
defines faith in terms of results which are manifest in the 
outward life. ‘‘Faith apart from works is dead” (James 
2:26). 

(f) Itisan act of the soul in trust or confidence ina person. If we 
are looking for the primary and essential significance of faith and that which 
gives it power, it will be found in this last statement which is really basal 
for all the other uses of the word. Faith is an act of trust or confidence in 
a person. Christian faith is an act of trust or confidence in Jesus Christ. 
It is, therefore, intensely personal. It may believe in a doctrine, or prom- 


142 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


ise, or work, but it believes in these because it trusts the person who is the 
author or cause of them. “ Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” said 
Jesus to the man who was born blind. He answered and said: ‘“ And who 
is He, Lord, that I may believe on Him?” Jesus said unto him: “‘ Thou 
hast both seen Him and He it is that speaketh with thee”. And he said: 
“Lord, I believe”? (John 9:35-38). Seeing, hearing, believing and worship- 
ping are the steps here set forth. This expresses both God’s and man’s 
idea of faith. God requires trust in Himself. Man says, who art Thou, 
Lord, that I may trust Thee. I must see and know before I can believe. 
John’s Gospel is especially emphatic in this personal aspect of faith as a 
living relation between man and God. Faith is not so much belief in truths, 
or promises, or gospels as it is primarily and basally trust in Jesus Christ. 

This is also the fundamental Pauline conception, that faith is the warm, 
living, passionate, personal adhesion to Jesus Christ. We are said “to be 
saved through faith’, ‘‘to be justified by faith”’, “‘to be joined to Christ 
by faith ”’, ‘‘to be preserved by faith”, “‘to overcome through faith’’, but all 
these imply a close personal relation to Christ. All these things will become 
actualities of experience through the power of Christ whom we trust. 

We must now attend to a still closer analysis of faith. 

(a) An intellectual perception of God is not faith. It may lead to a 
belief in His reality. ‘‘The demons also believe, and shudder” (James 2: 19). 
This perception does not differ essentially from any perception of reality. 
There is no necessary moral quality in the intellectual perception of God, 
even though it includes the moral character of God. The soul might perceive 
His moral excellence and yet be hostile to Him. All that such a perception 
does is to affirm the reality of God, and this is the necessary preliminary to 
either faith or hatred toward God. 

(4) Faith is both a perception of God as a reality and an acceptance 
of and willing submission to Him as our rightful sovereign. Faith on the 
one side is knowledge, and on the other is the hearty moral allegiance of the 
soul to God. Hence it is not a blind act of the soul. It involves the highest 
and clearest intelligence. It is a supreme act of both the intellectual and 
moral reason, plus a holy choice of the heart. 

Hence faith is inseparably interwoven with repentance and love in the 
beginnings of the new life. 

(c) It will be asked how does faith on its intellectual side perceive God. 

I answer (a) objectively through the Gospels, and (4) subjectively 
through our natures made in the likeness of God. These are separable in 
thought for purposes of analysis, but they are not separable in fact. They 
are mutually corrective and corroborative. Hence faith rests on the highest 
rationality, on its intellectual side, and on the right exercise of the moral 
nature, on its moral side. It is right knowledge plus right action based 
upon it. 

“He that believeth hath eternal life’ (John 6: 47). 

“That every one that beholdeth the Son and believeth on Him should 
have eternal life”? (John 6: 40). 


FAITH IN CHRIST. 143 


The Christian man beholds Christ, and beholding believes, and believing 
is in possession of eternal life. One cannot say that a man has faith in 
Christ and then obtains eternal life. Faith in Christ and possession of 
eternal life are coincident in their beginnings. There could not be faith 
without the possession of eternal life out of which faith springs, and there 
could not be eternal life without faith as the expression of it. They start 
together. They abide together. They are parts of one whole. It is as 
useless to ask if a man could be saved without personal faith in Christ, 
or if he could exercise faith without being saved, as it is to ask if one half of 
an apple is not the whole apple. How explicit is John’s declaration, ‘“‘ He 
that believeth hath eternal life’ (John 6:47). And he might have said 
with equal truth, he that hath eternal life believeth. 

Faith, then, begins at the point of union between the soul and its 
Saviour Jesus Christ. The faith life is the beginning of the Christ life in 
us, and the Christ life in us is the beginning of the faith life. They are at 
the source of all Christian living, and inasmuch as the Christian life is a 
work of God, we may say, in a general way, that faith is among the sources 
of it. 

But if I were to define more exactly and discriminatingly my own con- 
ception, I should say that it is not faith which is the spring of religious 
action, but it is the new, regenerate nature, begotten by the Holy Spirit, 
which is the spring of it. Faith is neither the cause, nor the source, nor 
the origin of that new nature, and hence is not the spring of religious action 
or religious fruits. The new nature, the new life, of which faith in Christ 
is the constant and true expression, is the spring of all holy desire, and of 
all holy action. In a word, I should make the new nature wrought in us 
by the Holy Spirit to be the spring of all right action. Faith is the continual 
affirmation of the soul that it is Christ who is its life, and that it forever 
enbraces and appropriates Him as the very essence of that new life. It is 
the soul’s perpetual acceptance of Christ. It is the soul’s perpetual and 
fixed looking on Christ as its Saviour and Lord, and, on the ground of what 
it sees in Him, its intelligent and eager union in His life. 

Faith, then, is one act in three parts.—1. The intelligent perception of 
Christ as He is. 2. The flinging of one’s self into the current of His life, 
so that, by our own free choice, hereafter our life flows on in His life and 
His life in our life. 3. The willing and joyous reception of Christ into 
our life in order that He may be our justification and our sanctification. It 
involves an emptying of self, of all self help, and of all self righteousness, 
and a receptive activity which appropriates Christ to itself. This phase of 
faith might be called a free and rational passivity of the soul for the receiv- 
ing of Christ, and for the putting at His disposal all our being, powers, 
purposes and possessions, so that He may, without hindrance from us, shape 
and fashion us after “‘ the good pleasure of His will’. All this we call trust, 
or faith. Again I affirm that evangelical faith is intensely personal. 

The secondary results are, of course, our confidence or faith that this 
divine person will do for us what is best, that He will providentially direct 


144 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


and overrule our lives, that He will provide daily bread, strength, wisdom 
and grace. But true faith does not fix its attention primarily on bread, or © 
goods, or things, but wholly on Christ. 

And now, having defined what faith is, I may say that really it is the 
new nature which is the spring of true religious action, as it is also the 
ground from which gfow true religious fruits. What part, then, does faith 
have? This, and this only, as it seems to me, that the soul by its free 
and voluntary act having perceived and embraced Jesus Christ, now desires 
to do what will please Him. It seeks to conform itself to His mind and 
will. It tries to make its plans, purposes and goals coincident with His. It 
not merely offers a passive submission of itself to Christ, but also at once 
moves forward, actively and eagerly, into all the Christ activities, the Christ 
plans for the world, and the supreme Christ goals. It is so completely 
identified with Christ that it seeks to become itself a Saviour of the world 
in company with the Christ who is the supreme Saviour. 

As in the case of Thomas, first the veil of doubt drops from his eyes 
and he sees clearly Jesus, his glorious and radiant Lord, and then, in the 
same instant, he flings, as it were, the arms of his love in a passionate 
embrace of possession around Him, as he cries aloud, ‘“‘ My Lord and my 
God”. This is faith, eager, passionate, personal. It is John’s Gospel only 
which records this incident. The reason is easy to find. It is coincident 
with John’s own conception of faith. He is always lying on Jesus’ bosom, 
looking up into Jesus’ face, hearing Jesus’ words, watching Jesus’ works, 
seeing the infinite reach of Jesus’ love, conscious of the almightiness of 
Jesus’ care, feeling the evercleansing flow of Jesus’ blood, and possessing an 
ever present and vivid sense of Jesus’ presence. 

In the perpetual knowledge and realization of all this, he is at the same 
time, on his part, voluntarily and eagerly joining himself, in an act perpet- 
ually renewed, to Jesus Christ as his only Lord and Saviour. This is John’s 
idea of faith, “‘ the faith which overcometh the world ”’. 


* JESUS THE BREAD OF LIFE, 
(St. JOHN 6:30-59.) 
BY REV. CORNELIUS WOERLFKIN, 


PASTOR OF THE GREENE AVENUE BAPTIST CHURCH, BROOKLYN, N. Y. 


“Tam the bread of life”. The analogues of Jesus were based upon 
things most familiar to the minds of the peasantry of Palestine. By them 
He articulated spiritual truths with human apprehensions. The staple food 
of the daily life was bread. Accessorial luxuries might be unknown, but 
bread was a necessity. Jesus likens Himself to this familiar diet, found in 
every home. ‘I am the bread of life * * * if any-man-eatof_this 
bread, he shall live forever”. It seems so artless that the running racer 
may read it. Its meaning lies so near the surface that the illiterate may 
interpret it. And yet many that heard it from the lips of Jesus stumbled at 
the saying. They gathered about Him in the hope of being fed with 
bread from His wonder-working hands. He directs their minds from the 
physical to the spiritual bread. Their interest is aroused, their desires 
quickened. Their apprehensions grow clear and cloudy. Their emotions 
flow and ebb like the tides. To their hardened hearts and opaque minds 
the simple utterance became an hard saying. To them the bread became 
indigestible stone—“ who can receive it?’ A great defection took place 
among them, and “many of His disciples went back and walked no more 
with Him”. Even the twelve must have been perplexed and tempted to 
join the secession. 

This revolutionary discourse upon “the bread of life’ was the issue of 
a wonder-work wrought by Jesus on the yesterday. It was the passover 
season. All_Israel should have been feasting; but many were distressed 
swith_hunger. Five little barley cakes and two small fishes—what were 
these _among the multitude? Multiplied by the yearning , sympathy and 


compassion of Jesus, , they increase sufficiently t to ‘satisfy all, with a bulk o: “of 


fragments left greater than the capital with which He began. The “people 
saw in this a sign, but alas for them, it pointed in the wrong direction. He 
met them on the plane of their temporal need. They are content to abide 
there and would proclaim Him king if He will continue with them. Their 
spirit differed nothing from the Roman plebeian throng who cried ‘Ave 
Czsar”, so long as they had the gratuity of corn to eat. A Jewish Cesar 
to fight their battles and supply their temporal wants is all they ask. They 
would take Him by force and make Him king—a bread king. 

The wonder-works of Jesus were not wrought to encourage them to 
believe that His power might be harnessed to the temporal life with all its 








* Delivered at the Third Conference, held at the Beneficent Congregational Church, December g, 1903. 


145 


146 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


burden, strain and necessity. He had not come to ameliorate temporal con- 
ditions and make the life that now is, comfortable, easy and satisfying, 
His mission in life was not to supplement the daily waste of the mortal life, 
but to bring humanity into the inheritance of incorruptible life, —"Theretére 
/ He denies Himself to mere social reform. He was the visitant whe came 
- from above, testifying of the things which He had heard and seen. He 
came from God—an ambassador to speak the word of God. He was the 
light of life, the spirit of life, the witness of life, the way of life. He would 
not be a bread king. He would be the bread of life, the life eternal. “All 
His wonder-works were signs hung out amid things seen, to be advertise- 
ments of spiritual things unseen. They were index fingers pointing to a life 
beyond the temporal horizon. They were echoes from a higher realm; 
embroideries on the veil of nature, behind which dwelt the mysterious pres- 
ence and power of God. They were designed to arrest attention and arous 

interest. They were the terminus a guo by which souls might get on th 

bridge of faith, and pass into the life which is life indeed. Such was the 
design of the feeding of the multitude. When the people came the next 
day, their very coming was latent with the cry, ‘“‘Give us bread to eat’’, 
His answer to this cry was to turn their minds from the advertisement to 
the thing advertised. The bread which they had eaten in such h abundance 
was a sign of the bread which nourishes the life eternal, that ‘bread which 
satisfies the deepest appetite in the human soul—a heart-hunger for God. 

‘“‘T am the bread of life”. By the introduction of this analogy, Jesus 
tells us that physiology has its companion law in the spiritual world. The 
two run parallel. Every observance in the natural and seen should read us 
lessons concerning the spiritual and unseen. By means of Christ’s ana- 
logues we have the power of changing the focus of our vision. Instead of 
looking at the things seen, we use them as a lense through which we behold 
the unseen and eternal. 

The zones of theology and_biology lie next to one another. Not only 
do they touch, but the line of demarcation which has hitherto indicated 
their boundaries is becoming fainter. We begin to suspect that they are 
upper and lower sides of one truth. Both theology and biology affirm 
specialization in the several forms of life with which they have to do. They 
employ different terms to designate the vital principle that lies behind the 
specialization of life-forms. But the several principles, if not the terms, are 
synonymous. 

Election is a theological term. Coming from the higher w orld, it seems 
to wear the form of divine arbitrariness. Some minds have conceived the 
doctrine of election as the only foundation upon which to build an assur- 


ance of the hope of eternal life. Others have repudiated it as a caricature. 


of the method of God. Men have fought both for and against it. Wesley 
scorned the very thought of this doctrine, saying to Whitfield, “* Your god is 
my devil”. On the other hand, Froude, speaking from the historian’s 
standpoint, not the theologian’s, says: ‘‘ If Calvanism is indeed the hard and 
unreasonable creed which modern enlightenment declares it to be, why has 


i NURI 


JESUS THE BREAD OF LIFE. 147 


it possessed such singular attractions in times past for some of the greatest 
men that ever lived: if it be a creed of intellectual servitude, why was it able 
to inspire and sustain the bravest efforts ever made by man to break the 
yoke of unjust authority?’’ We may have a duty to brush away the dust of 
misconception that has accrued upon this doctrine. But the term stands 
for a great vital principle, and is justified in remaining in the nomenclature 
of the science of spiritual biology. 

Biology employs another term—selection. This term comes from a lower 
plane, plumed with the prestige of modern scholarship. But it has only aug- 
mented the theological term by the prefix of aconsonant. Natural selection 
and spiritual election are synonymous terms in the study of lower and higher 
biology. They both stand for forces that crystallize in specialized forms of 
life. Biology predicates structural changes. Features once prominent disap- 
pear, and potentialities once latent are prominently developed. By such struc- 
tural modification life survived the changes of environment and moved toward 
more complex and higher forms of existence. Theology predicates that flesh 
and blood cannot enter the Kingdom of God. Changes arecoming. Thenat-, - 
ural cannotabide. That is first which is natural, and afterward that which is 
spiritual. The natural is the seed-plot for the spiritual. By spiritual birth 
and spiritual growth we lose the features of carnality and develop the poten- 
tialities of spirituality. Ultimately God must be all and in all. God isa spirit, 
and they who would survive must become one with Him in spirit. He that » 
is joined to the Lord is one spirit. This survival is on the principle termed 
election. The election of theology is the selection of biology carried up to 
the highest known zone of specialized life. Natural selection is the whole 
creation groaning and travailing in pain, with outstretched neck straining to 
greet the time when life shall emerge from the bondage of corruption. 
Spiritual election is the spirit of God brooding over the human soul, seeking 
to bring forth a life in the spirit and likeness of the Son of God. Theology 
and biology stand and behold the Christ of God. If man is the end of 
biology, then behold the man in whom the fulness of God dwells. If God is 
the end of theology, then behold God manifested in the flesh. The one must 
be satisfied that His life is the light of men, while the other follows Him as 
the Lamb of God who leadeth into the pastures and beside the waters of the 
life everlasting. Thou wilt show me the path of life. Both will join in say- 
ing, “I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness”. 

The central theme in the Gospel of John is that specialized life known 
as eternal al life and manifested in Jesus Christ. Eternal is the term describ- 
ing its ‘quality, and, therefore, becomes one of the cardinal words of this 
Gospel. Of this life certain predicates are affirmed. Its source and centre 
is God. Its manifestation and channel] is in Jesus Christ. Its inheritance _ 
is through the process of a spiritual birth. Its environment is the spirit of © 
Christ. Its nature, type, law, purpose, and glory are all seen in the incar- 
nate, crucified, and risen Son of God. In the passage under consideration 
we are taught concerning the meat upon which this eternal life must depend 
for nurture and growth. 


’ a 
148 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Every form of organic life is supported by something external to itself. 
Every peculiar type of life has its appointed supply whereby to maintain its 
existence and development. Man has a threefold life. On the lowest plane 

.’ he has a material body, in common with animals. On the highest plane he 
has a spirit, in the similitude of God. On the mediate plane he has a 
rational soul, the nexus between spirit and body. The body is fed with 
chemical nutriment; the mind with thought; the spirit with God. Each may 
be imposed upon by deleterious supplies. The physical prodigal may leave 
the father’s table with its wholesome bread, and feed on the pods from the 
swinetrough of gross sensual indulgence. The soul may leave the banquet 
of truth and snuff up the fever-breeding air of pride, envy, covetousness, 
authority, and vain glory. The spirit may be denied the vital tonic of holy 
meditation upon God. But when each several phase of life receives its 
appointed meat in due season, the tendency is toward health, comfort, and 
satisfaction. 

“wich farmer sought to fea’ hs soe Ga ie coe When 
the rich farmer sought to feed his soul on the corn that overflowed his 
barns he became a fool and died. If the modern Christian Scientist (falsely 
so-called) were to try the trick of feeding that figment of the imagination, 
the body, on thought, his obituary would soon be written under the caption, 
‘*Thou fool, this day shall thy body be required of thee’. Likewise the 

Po ‘Spiritual life, the life eternal, cannot be supported except it a upon God, 
the Lord, the Spirit. 

The Old Testament saints experienced this heart-craving. Out of the 
Psalms there comes to us the cry, “My soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh 
longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is. * * * As 
the heart panteth and brayeth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul 
after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God”. Nor 
did they cry in vain. They praised the Lord, saying, ‘“‘ He hath set a table 
before me in the presence of the enemy. * * * Man shall not live by 

“bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 
* * * JT have treasured up the words of His mouth more than my neces- 
sary food”. Throughout the olden days God spake unto the fathers in the 
prophets. Their faith fed upon God through every medium of revelation— 
prophecy and providence, sacrifice and sacrament were tables where the 
spirits of just men fed upon God. But He hath in these last days spoken 
tous ina Son. In Him the abstractions of spiritual truth, which satisfied 
the heart hunger of former days, are made concrete. He is the bread of 
life whereof if a man eat he shall be satisfied. 

_” There is a fourfold statement here concerning the bread of life. Each 
statement supplies some additional detail to the former, and each one is 
made emphatic by a double amen. The first statement advertises the 

/ exiStenceof the meat.which abideth unto life eternal. The second statement 

V~brings it to view, saying;)‘‘I am_the_bread of life”. The third statement 
informs us that this bread is His-fesh_which He will_give for the life of the 


world. The last statement emphasizes the necessity of jour assimilating 
Christ by the eating of this bread. ee 








JESUS THE BREAD OF LIFE. 149 


I. Work not for the meat that-perisheth,but for the meat which abideth 
unto eternal life. There is a certain work necessary for the obtainment of 
our daily bread. But this labor may fall into a false emphasis. It may 
become burdened with undue anxiety and be made the pivot of carnal care. 
Against this fretting anxiety Jesus specially warns us. Yet if the daily bread 
came easily, man would be continually beset with the temptation to spend 
his best energies in self-indulgence, and rest satisfied with the carnal pleasures 
of his temporal life. ‘Therefore the necessary work is not an accident but a 
divine appointment. Responsibility calls up the latent good in human life. 
Necessity sets to work the functions of brain and heart. Manual labor is 
the outward scaffolding; within is the structure of soul and spirit. Hence 
the daily meal represents a greater value than can be computed into dollars 
and cents. There is an undefined plus there. To this higher self man owes 
his chief duty. All other responsibilities focus there. Its hunger cannot 
be satisfied with the labor of hands or the genius of mind. It must have a 
spiritual meat, which meat is given us by the Son of man. Our Father’s 
provision for spiritual life is in Christ Jesus. Him hath he sealed; and the 
only labor on our part to obtain Him is a spiritual work—the work of faith. 
“‘ This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent”. 

II. Christ is this bread of life. First He quickens the spiritual life and 
then maintains it» Bread is avery significant analogue. The loaf that comes 
upon~our table“is the sacrifice of the summer harvest. The grain grows in 
the summer’s glory, drinking in sunshine and shower. It moves like waves 
of the sea under the blow of the August breezes. Then the hour of sacrifice 
comes. The harvester’s scythe cuts it down and cradles it. The thresher’s 
flail smites it again and again. Then it is ground many times in the mills 
to become the finest of wheat. Kneaded and baked it comes at last to us in 
the form of bread. Simple as it seems there is in it nutriment to supply the 
fuel of life. It repairs the waste of bone, muscle and nerve; it supplies the 
energy that works in heart, brain and all organs. The body needs many 
building materials—oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, iron, lime, soda, 
phosphorus, chondrin, osmazome, cholesterine, and resin. What a perplex- 
ing multiplicity! But they are all in the bread that supports physical life. 
“‘T am the bread of life’. The meat of our spiritual nature is concrete in 
His personality. In Him is life. His life becomes the sacrificial bread of 
the soul. Equal with God in the eternal glory He becomes incarnate, 
emptying Himself of that native majesty. Aman of sorrows and acquainted 
with grief, He is threshed on the floor of human sorrow and woe. On the 
cross He is ground in the mills of God’smystery. Risen from the dead and 
exalted to be a prince and Saviour, He is the bread of life. How many 
characteristics are necessary to make our character godlike? Wedonot know. 
There must be love, humility, submission, patience, hope, gentleness, joy, 
and all the qualities that entered to compose the character of the Son of God. 
In Him all our need is supplied according to His riches in glory. In Him 
are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. In Him dwelleth the 
fulness of the godhead bodily. eAnd of His fulness have we all received 


150 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


and grace for grace. As we partake of Him, the soul gets out of Him the 
redemption of the daily waste and the increment of the energy of the life of 
God. We may not explain how it takes place, but we know from experience, 
that as we meditate upon the beauty and perfection of the character of our 
Lord, and as we pray that we may be transformed into His likeness, some- 
how our spiritual nature takes in the Christ spirit, and all the attributes of 
His character transfigure themselves through our lives and conduct. 

III. ‘Il am the living bread, and the bread which I will give is My 
flesh’, That is to say, the bread which He gives us is life, for He came to 
minister and to give His life aransom for many. But it is His life manifested 
in the flesh,—His life as we have it from the incarnation to the rending of 
the veil of His flesh on the cross. Mere literalism of interpretation is a 
snare here. In missing the figurative factor, Nicodemus asked: “* How can 
these things be”. The Samaritan woman asked: “‘How He could give 
water having nothing to draw with”. The Jews asked: «‘ How can He give 
us His flesh to eat”. To them it would suggest cannibalism. Here is one 
of the cardinal errors of the Romish mass. They literalize this scripture in 
the doctrine of the actual presence, If it were true, it would avail nothing. 
Physically, the chemical properties composing the body of Jesus were no 
different from those that make up our own. It needed the supply of food to 
supply the daily waste, and increase it to the stature of manhood. It suc- 
cumbed to the mortal injuries inflicted on the cross. Toeat thereof would 
no more beget eternal life than could the heavenly manna confer a life 
immortal. 

Verse aes sienhee the interpreting factor. ‘It is the spirit that 
quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken unto 
you, they are spirit and they are life”. Literally a word is but a sound 
in the air or a combination of ee made with ink upon paper. The 
ear may hear the one or the eye see the other, and both remain mean- 
ingless. It requires a discerning spirit to read the meaning of words. 
Christ Jesuskwas the word of God written in the character of the flesh. He 
could be seen and heard and yet misunderstood. The Pharisees saw His 
works and heard His words and said “He hath a devil”. The disciples 
witnessed the same life and works and said: ‘“ Thou art the Christ, the Son 
of the living God”. How did they know? Jesus said: “ Blessed art thou, 
flesh and blood (not even the flesh and blood of Jesus) hath not revealed it 
to thee but My Father in heaven”. Yet the revelation was through the word 
made flesh. They had the spiritual discernment to understand the meaning 
in the word. Physicians often write prescriptions for tonics to our systems. 
In so doing the bulk of the dose taken has no medicinal value. The stimu- 
lating ingredients are written in drams and grains. The balance is written 
in ounces. The latter are not designed to play an active part. They are 
the vehicle which carry the other ingredients that could not be taken without 
it. The flesh of the Son of God is the vehicle by which the life of God 
comes to us, and in whom we may receive it. 


There are eternal idealities and realities in God that constitute life. 
a 


we Waa 


JESUS THE BREAD OF LIFE. 151 


Christ is the embodiment of these. By His incarnation and all its sequences 
these became articulated to our conception and reception. He is the ver- 
nacular of God speaking the life of God to our souls. 

Christ is the radiance of the glory of the invisible God. He is the sun- 
beam who brings us the God of light. The sunbeam seems a very simple 
affair, a single thread of yellow light. A triangular piece of common glass 
will serve to unwind this thread and reveal the prismatic colors. A perfect 
spectroscope serves to show us not seven rays in the sunbeam, but innumera- 
ble rays, each having a distinct property, contributing to the life of the world. 
The flesh of Jesus is a spiritual spectroscope. It isa simple matter to say 
“God is love”. But not until that love is unwound through the incarnation 
and crucifixion of the Christ of God do we really know what itis. In that 
love is the will of God, the patience of God, the holiness of God, the justice: 
of God, the power of God, etc., etc. So when we feed on the love of God, 
made over to us in the gift of His Son we have “ The living bread which 
cometh down out of heaven, that aman may eat thereof and not die”. ‘‘ This 
is my body which is broken for you”. It is the corn of wheat which falls into 
the ground and dies, that its life may be made bread for us. It is the rending 
of the veil that the mysterious presence and fulness of God may be opened 
tous. Itis the breaking of the alabaster box, that the ointment of life may 
flow out and the fragrance of divine love fill the universe. The incarnation 
is the embodiment of God’s will. The crucifixion is the overflow of His 
love. To feed on God’s will is meat indeed, and to drink of His love atthe 
cross is drink indeed. 

IV. ‘He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood, abideth in Me 
and lin him”. Spiritual assimilation is necessary. The life of Jesus is an 
illustration. ‘As the living Father sent Me and I live because of the 
Father”. The wisdom and power of Jesus were perplexing problems to His 
adversaries. Whence hath this man this wisdom and these mighty works? 
They looked to the schools, but His name was not on the matriculation list. 
They knew the carpenter shop, but no fountain of power sprang theree “I 
live by the Father”; here He discovers to us the secret. ‘‘ The Father loveth 
the Son”. That was the table at which He fed daily. If we would know 
whence Jesus had that poise of life in which blended peace, patience, com- 
passion, joy and hope, He fed on the love of God. ‘The Father showeth 
Him all things that He Himself doeth”. The Father was the secret of His 
power. He could from Himself do nothing. He studied the will of God 
and acted in the obedience of faith. He said: ‘“‘My meat is to do the will 
of Him that sent Me and to finish His work”’. That will was made complete 
on the cross. ‘Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My 
life”. Here then was the secret of His life and work. ‘‘I am come down 
from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me, and 
this is the will of Him that sent Me, that all that which He hath given Me, 
I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day”. By meditation 
and obedience He assimilated the love and will of God. Even so must we 
live toward Him as He did toward God. 


152 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


This analogue of “Christ the bread of life”, is suggestive in many 
directions. Irregularity in the daily fellowship and appropriations can not 
obtain the best experiences and results. Special diet may be necessary by 
meditation on specific attributes in the life of Jesus, for the reproduction of 
the same characteristics in our own lives. Failure to expend the vitality 
gained by meditation will clog and dry in the soul as a like process obtains 
in the body. Unassimilated truth will cause distress akin to dyspepsia. 
Many cannot bear the meat diet at all and must be fed on milk, and malted 
milk at that. But to the soul that has the conscientious desire to grow in 
spirit, there is ample provision in Christ the bread. To believe on Him is 
initial faith. To receive Him is appropriating faith. To understand Him 
is intelligent faith. To assimilate Him is active faith. Like all life, the 
spiritual life is known by the food that it requires, and the process of replace- 
ment and transformed energy results in transfigured character bearing the 
likeness of the Son of God. 


* THE CONFESSION OF PETER—CHRIST THE WORLD’S ONLY HOPE 
AND LIFE. 


(ST. JOHN 6:68, 69.) 
BY REV. HENRY S. NASH, D. D., 


PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION IN THE EPISCOPAL THEOLOGICAL 


SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, Mass. 


“Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life”. I 
count on your forgiveness, if, in order to come to this verse along the right 

line I seem to repeat what may have been said in the course of the day; but 
it is impossible to enter properly into any great verse of this wonderful book 
unless you carry into it the light of a very large context. 

. There are some human sayings that have ‘‘ Greatness thrust upon them”’, 
and have become independent of their context in order to be made great. 
Take for example our national motto, “‘E Pluribus Unum”’, which was a 
part of a receipt for making salad. There is a word that had to break away 
from its context and history to have greatness thrust upon it. Again, you 
have another humorous illustration in that saying from Terence, ‘‘ Nothing 
that is human reckon I to be foreign to myself”. If you ever carry that into 
its context, I doubt if you will ever use it again. You will find it was spoken 
by a Paul Pry who was speaking through a keyhole and who sought to 
justify himself by speaking that ringing phrase. 

But other tvords are born great, and such words must be taken with 
their climate. It is impossible to find one’s way along the right path into 
any one of these deep words without carrying a large context with you. I 
said in a preceding address that this book was all center. The problem of 
its authorship is an exceedingly difficult one. I for my part believe that the 
only possible explanation of the primary text of the Gospel is that it was 
written, as the tradition says, by John the Apostle in his old age. 

Let us call to one’s aid what we know about the action of the human 
memory in old age. We all know how memory behaves. If any of us are 
getting towards fifty or some distance beyond, we know by personal experi- 
ence; more and more the intermediate state of the years from thirty 
or thirty-four drops out, and as we go into ripening years, the events of 
youth become contemporary. I can remember with more precision things 
which happened when I was twelve years old than when I was thirty-two ; 
and I expect to have that process go on, and if I live to be seventy, I expect 
to be contemporary with ‘“‘my little brother ”, as Stephenson called the boy 
he once was. 


* Delivered at the Third Conference, held at the Benes cent Congregational Church, December 9, 1903. 


oS) 


a) eee 2 


154 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


We must add to this trait of memory, in connection with the authorship 
of this book, the fact that John had no artificial memory. Our memory is 
for the most part a memory of libraries; but his was a natural one, it was in 
his head. ‘That is where he carried all his history. One knows how a man 
who has had the help of no book to pin him down to accurate quotations, 
and to precise scientific memories, when he comes to look back out of his 
old age at the life of a great friend, will write the life of that friend. All the 
accidental things will have dropped out, and only the heart of the story will 
be left. And therefore the peculiarity of this Fourth Gospel is that it is all 
center. There is nothing in it but the person of Christ. 

The striking literary illustration of this is the fact that in the Fourth 
Gospel you find no parables ; that is, no parables which strictly speaking can 
be called parables. You have in the tenth chapter the so-called allegory of 
the Good Shepherd, and in the fifteenth something which approaches the 
parable, but they can not be called that in any exact sense. The parable 
has disappeared in John’s Gospel. And the reason is, that in the Synoptics 
they are in connection with the doctrine of the Kingdom, but in the Fourth 
Gospel the doctrine of the Kingdom has been swallowed up in the person 
and presence of the King. 

Again, to carry this thought one step further, John looks back at the.life 
of his friend through His death. Herein he is like Paul, but herein he is 
also unlike Paul. For while it is untrue to say that Paul cared nothing for 
the Christ of Galilee and Palestine, it is quite true to say that he did not see 
deep into His life back of the cross. It is entirely true to say that because 
Paul’s memory was not stocked with the living words of the Lord Jesus, and 
because his mind was not filled with the results of an intimate personal 
acquaintance with Jesus Christ, the background of Christ’s life,as Paul sees 
it, is relatively narrow. But in the Fourth Gospel there is a great back- 
ground of the Christ of history standing behind the Christ of the cross. The 
Fourth Gospel is all center. The center isthe cross. But the eye sees deep 
into the life back of the cross. 

So the larger context which we must carry into this verse is this 
structure of the Gospel. Then there are two details of the qguthor’s program 
which must be added to this. The first is that in the Synoptics there is no 
clear distinction between the church and the crowd. In the Fourth Gospel 
the church is distinct from the crowd from the very first day. The little 
company of personal believers who have been called by Jesus and blessed 
by His intimacy, and through that have been taught to understand Him,— 
they are distinct and separate from the mass at the outset, and remain so to 
the end. 

The other element which must be carried into the context is our author’s 
conception of the Messianic mob. ‘There is sucha thing as a religious mob, 
you know. And the religious mob is one of the elements in our author’s 
conception of our Lord’s life. This religious mob, or Messianic mob, 

‘is like the chorus in the Greek play. The chorus in the Greek drama has 
no backbone of its own; it is constantly taking its color from the last 


THE CONFESSION OF PETER. 155 


speaker, if he speaks forcibly enough. Thus in any play of Sophocles you 
can always tell by the color of the chorus what has been the theme of the 
last great speaker. Even so in John’s Gospel the mass of half-believers 
is constantly taking color now from Jesus, and now from His opponents, 
the Jews. Moving now backwards, now forwards, they, in distinction from 
the disciples, are what Luther called ‘‘ milk disciples”’. They cannot digest 
strong food. They cannot stand upon their own feet. The true believer is 
the one who knew Jesus before He worked any miracle, and therefore sees 
the miracles through the personality of Jesus Christ. But the other type of 
believer insists upon seeing Jesus through the miracles, that is, upon seeing 
the Master from the outside. 

And now, coming to the more immediate context let us look at chapter 
six of which our verse is a part. Chapter six, speaking ina figure, is the 
watershed of the Gospel. It records the supreme crisis in the Master’s life. 
On the far side, beginning with the prologue, we trace in it the climax in the 
story of our Saviour’s popular success. On the nearer side of it, looking 
toward the passion and crucifixion, lies the increasing difficulty of His 
position, the deepening doubt and unbelief which issued on the cross. 

You remember the contents of the chapter. Jesus had not thought it 
best to go up personally to the Passover. So He must needs keep the Pass- 
over in His own way and He keeps it in the wilderness. He plays the part 
of God’s host out there in the wilderness, and His guests are a great miscel- 
laneous crowd of pilgrims who are on the way to the Passover. The result 
of Jesus’ wonderful miracle, that of the loaves and fishes, was that the 
Messianic ambition of the crowd straightway sprang to life: as John tells us, 
they undertook to force Jesus’ hand and to make Him a King. They were 
not real disciples. They were masters in disguise. Just as you and I con- 
stantly in our life with Christ and God play the part of master and try to 
force our ambitions upon God and tell Him in effect that we will turn 
Atheists, if He does not let us have our own way. -So with these half 
believers. 

This Messianic mob tries, in the enthusiasm created by our Lord’s great 
miracle, to force Jesus’ hand and to make Him a King. And there for the 
moment, humanly speaking, the gulf opened at His feet. Humanly speak- 
ing, He came within an inch of spoiling God’s plans. If He had yielded, 
what would have happened? Galilee was a very small province of a very 
small country. Jesus was in sight of Tiberius when He worked the miracle, 
and if He had yielded a single inch to the ambitions of that Messianic mob, 
there would have been a rebellion, an attempt at a popular uprising. So the 
Master saw a great gulf yawn at His feet and you must carry that fact in 
mind in order to understand this sixth chapter; for straightway Jesus puts 
the faith of these half-believers to the test. 

First, He draws Himself aloof from them and goes off into the mountain 
alone. On the morrow the crowd seeks Him and finds Him. He puts them 
to the test. He makes faith hard. Thatis the way He sometimes treats us. 
Christ and God in Him are constantly making faith hard. And why should 


156 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


faith not be hard? Why should faith be easy? If faith were easy, it would 
soon become cheap and not worth the while of earnest men and women. 
But God makes faith hard in order to test the believer. And Christ here 
deliberately made faith hard. And the way He does it, you will remember, 
is to exalt His own personality. He will not come down to their level, they 
must come up to His. He exalts His own personality and challenges those 
believers to believe in Him, not because of His miracle, but because of His 
person. ‘ 

But they balk and will not believe on those terms. And you will remem- 
ber that every time they advance a difficulty, Jesus, instead of making faith 
easier makes it even harder, until at last He uses the symbolical expressions 
of the bread of life, and declares that unless they eat His flesh and drink 
His blood they cannot be saved. 

Thereupon the crowd said: ‘This is a hard saying’’. The Greek there 
does not mean that Jesus’ saying was one which was unintelligible. They 
‘thought they understood it perfectly. And that was the whole trouble. 
Oftentimes in the crisis of our own faith the real trouble is that we think we 
know. We have got it in our heads, the thing is perfectly intelligible, only 
we cannot live up to it. So the crowd did not say “ This is a hard saying”, 
because they did not understand it. If they had said that, they would have 
stopped to listen. For when you know a thing is not intelligible to you and 
there is something inside of it, you stopand listen. But the crowd was very 
sure they knew what it meant, and when they said “ A hard saying”’, they 
meant this is a bad saying, utterly impossible. No orthodox Jewish church- 
man can entertain it. And so they turned their backs upon Him and went 
off to their old way of life. 

Now Jesus turns to His disciples and says, with pain in His heart, ‘* Will 
ye also go away?” Thencomes the answer of the church, speaking through 
Simon Peter: ‘‘ Master, to whom shall we go, it is Thou, and Thou only who 
hast the words of eternal life”. Zhe words of eternal life,—that is to say, in 
the first instance, words which bring with them irresistible conviction. The 
great mass of words do not, just because there is such a massofthem. The 
newspaper brings no conviction, it never is meant to. The average novel 
which we read is a kind of intellectual opiate when we are tired. Ninety- 
nine hundredths of what we call our conversation carries no conviction, for 
nowhere in it isa word that has wings, a word that breathesand burns. But 
sometimes there are words that bring irresistible conviction, words that come 
from the heart and life of the speaker and go straight to the heart of the 
hearer. And Peter, representing the living church in all days, says to the 
Saviour: ‘Thou hast the words of eternal life”. He means in the first 
instance words which bring irresistible conviction and certitude. 

‘“« The words of eternal life’’. When we have taken that phrase, which 
is one of the constantly repeated phrases of this Gospel, and have studied it 
long enough, the substantive swallows up the adjective. The word life is 
enough. There was atime when I was a boy, and then mere life was eternal 
life. When I was a freshman in college, mere life for me was eternal life. 


THE CONFESSION OF PETER. 57) 


I do not believe any freshman, unless he is exceedingly mature when he 
enters, is ever conscious of a lack of time. He has all the time there is and 
a good deal more. Time seems to appear absolutely limitless to the boy just 
entering college. But what happened as we grew up? If we are earnest 
there appears a disproportion between time and work. As years come on 
and responsibilities are assumed and life is seen and understood in all its 
vastness, the disproportion becomes a!most terrible. 

Then the tragedy of life begins. Life threatens to become a slow fever. 
You remember Macbeth’s words about the man he has murdered, “After 
life’s fitful fever he sleeps well”. The great trouble in growing up is that 
life becomes a fever. What one of us has not the fever of life in his veins? 
What one of us does not, nearly every day, fall out of eternity into time, and 
spoil our day’s work by being anxious and worried about it, allowing the 
thing we call time to put its jagged teeth into it and sometimes gnaw the 
very heart out of it. And how are we to doa real day’s work? Only by 
living in eternity. The true Christian does live day by day in eternity. 
Whenever a man really prays he passes out of time into eternity. The 
reason why prayer is the Christian’s fountain of youth is that it remakes and 
refreshes him. For, when we pray, we go into eternity and return out of 
prayer into time, refreshed and recreated. 

Peter, speaking in the name of the living church, which I venture to 
define as that body of men and women who have learned how to pray and 
therefore have learned how to work,—Peter, speaking in the name of the 
living church, says to the Master, ‘Thou hast the secret of eternal life . 
Thou alone canst impart to men the art of doing the full day’s work while 
time lasts in the spirit and presence of the Eternal”. And why? Because 
Jesus is the revelation of a personal God. What do we mean by person- 
ality? Well, that isa very deep question. Perhaps I ought not to have 
asked it, for, when a question is asked, you must try to answer it. But I 
could not help it. The simple truth is that what we call real thinking con- 
sists in asking almost impossible questions and doing our best with the 
answer. What, then, do we mean by the personality of God? What do 
you mean by your own personality? For, unless you have some conception 
of your own personality you are using a mere phrase, entering a mist of 
words when you talk about the personality of God. What, then, do you 
mean by calling yourself a person? 

We have not gone far into the mystery of personality. We have just 
begun to spell it out in words of one syllable. That is all. But, so far as 
we know anything about the personality, it means three things, or rather 
three aspects of one thing. First of all, it means self-knowledge. The dif- 
ference between a person and the man or woman who is not a person is the 
difference between people who do not know and those who do know them- 
selves. That splendid Greek motto put upon the temple at Delphi, ‘“‘ Know 
thyself” is the maxim of every spirit. And here again let me quote Shake- 
speare to illuminate the subject. You remember how, in King Lear, Gon- 
eril says about her father, after the awful tragedy has begun, ‘‘ He did but 





158 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


slenderly know himself”. It seems to me that is one of the neglected hints 
in the study of Lear. There, almost under his breath, the great dramatist 
himself gives us the clew to the tragedy. It grew out of King Lear’s slender 
knowledge of himself. And all of the real tragedies of life grow out of our 
imperfect knowledge of ourselves. To know one’s self is the first thing per- 
sonality means. And when we speak about God we mean that God alone 
knows Himself. 

Secondly, personality means self-mastery. Find a true man or woman 
and you find beings who shape and plan their own lives. Find men and 
women who are not persons, and you shall find jelly fish, and they are as 
thick, sometimes, as jelly fish in any particular part of the Bay of Fundy. 
I have leaned over my boat, sometimes, and counted jelly fish, it seemed to 
me, up to ten thousand to a hundred square feet of water. Sometimes, 
when one sees crowds of people driven towards barren conclusions and 
barren actions, one is tempted to think that he sees a great mass of jelly 
fish who are driven with the tide. When you find persons, you find people 
who plan their lives and then live them according toa plan. Now, when 
we speak of the personality of God, we mean that He is complete master of 
Himself. 

Thirdly, when we speak of personality, this is our meaning. Find a 
great human person, and you shall find someone who has the art of reveal- 
ing himself in everything that he does. I have known just one great man in 
my life, Phillips Brooks. And he is the only great man I expect to meet on 
this side of the grave. Phillips Brooks, because he was great, had the art of 
revealing the greatness of his nature in mere trivialities. And just in pro- 
portion as we become personal and live the personal life, have we the gift 
and art of imparting our entire self to those who touch us and those who 
know us. Is not this the blessed mystery of friendship? What do we mean 
by friendship, whether it be that of husbana and wife, or of man and man, 
or of woman and woman? Wemean just this. Where you find friends you 
find persons, and where you find persons you find people capable of reveal- 
ing themselves to each other so completely that trivial things cease to be. 
There is no trifle in friendship. You outgrow trifles when you become 
friends. Friendship is the life of persons walking together in the light of 
the eternal. 

This is what we aim at when we apply the term to God. He alone abso- 
lutely knows Himself. He alone absolutely masters Himself. He alone 
has in Himself the perfect art of self-revelation. Touch God and you touch 
the whole of Him. There are no fractions ina person. There are no frac- 
tions in God. But where shall we go to find God asa person? Where? 
except to Christ. Henry Ward Beecher once said that when he said ‘‘God”, 
without thinking of Christ, there went up in his mind a vague mental mist. 
That is just what happens to us when we say “God” without thinking of 
Christ. There rises in our minds a vague mental mist, a mere spiritual 
exhalation. When we want to see God asa person we go to Christ, and 
through Him,—the absolutely perfect man, who is at the same time abso- 


THE CONFESSION OF PETER. 159 


lutely the Son of the Father,—God, or the personal life is revealed to us. 
Seeing Christ, we see God. Touching Christ we have the revelation of 
God’s personal life. When we ally ourselves to the personality of God we 
ourselves become in principle and in potence persons. And only through 
our alliance with the personality of God, as revealed and incarnated in Christ, 
can we become in the fullest sense of the word persons and do a person’s 
work. 

The alternative to the incarnation, the alternative to belief in Christ as 
the final revelation of a personal God is Pantheism. The parable of Pan- 
theism cannot be better expressed than in the parable of the sick lion. 
The lion became an invalid, you remember, and since he could not go out 
to get his game he anticipated modern fashions and had a five o’clock tea. 
He sent out invitations to all his subjects to come and see him. But the fox 
refused to go. When the fox was asked why, he said that he had noticed 
that all the tracks went one way, that the animals who went to that royal five 
o’clock tea apparently never came back. This is the parable of Pantheism. 
In Pantheism we have no foothold for human individuality. In order to 
make yourself one with the eternal substance of things you allow that sub- 
stance of things to swallow you up. These words are in point: 


“Like bubbles on the sea of matter born, 
We rise, we break, and to that sea return”. 


God is a spiritual sea. We rise out of it as the bubble rises, and, like the 
bubble, we break. 

But in the Christian doctrine of the incarnation there is firm ground for 
an ethical conception of personality, and nowhere else. So we, who in our 
imperfect measure are members of the living church, that church which is 
made up in all ages of the men and women who have learned to pray, and 
because they have learned this have learned how to live in eternity and 
to do their day’s work with none of the fever of time in their veins, we say 
to the Lord Jesus what Peter said in our name centuries ago, ‘“ Lord, to 
whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life”. We are shut up 
to Christ. And why? I heard this morning of a man who discussed theol- 
ogy with one of our theological students while he was tinkering his teeth. 
One comes upon theology in very queer places, sometimes. ‘This discussion 
happened in a dentist’s shop. The dentist said to the theological student, 
““My god is electricity”. Well, that looks like a very clever thing. It 
depends a good deal upon his manners. If he said it ina crude, sophomoric 
way, all you can do is to wait until you and he can meet somewhere. You 
cannot meet the mind of a man who says sophomorically, ‘‘ My god is elec- 
tricity”. To use Cardinal Newman’s fine expression, “‘ You might just as 
well try to get up a duel between a dog anda fish”. To argue is to waste 
one’s time. You must wait for other opportunities before you try to defend 
the work of Christ to sucha man. But suppose he says it reverently? Sup- 
pose he means that electricity is the latest revelation of the universe, and so 
is the symbol of its majesty and mystery. 

What do you say to him? If you know your Christ you wont dream of 


4 


160 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


burning him at the stake, and when you refuse to listen to a heretic you are 
in principle burning him at the stake. If you are allowed by history to get 
your hands on the reins of power you would resume the habit of burning 
him in order to get him out of existence. But suppose we have outgrown 
that habit, and have the patience to listen to the heretic, what shall we say 
to him who reverently says that electricity is his god? Something like this, 
‘Your words are all very well as far as they go”. But how far do they go? 
What is the day’s work of a man? to mend broken human teeth? Is it to 
pick out a little corner of the earth and know it well? As Voltaire said, 
‘To cultivate his little garden’”’? We have all kinds of avocations, but the 
vocation of us all is to be deep-minded men and women, doing the entire 
task of men and women. But what is the whole task of men and women? 
Why, as we spell it here, it is to take your city of Providence and make it 
look a little bit like the New Jerusalem. To take New York, or any other 
place and make it look a bit like the heavenly city. And how are you going 
to do it? If you take this and nothing less to be your vocation, and the 
mending of teeth to be your avocation, a mere method of meeting economic 
expenses while you give your whole heart to your real business in life, where 
shall you go to build your strength? 

Where shall you get the power to do that day’s work? It is compara- 
tively easy to tinker teeth and do it well. It is comparatively easy to study 
this or that branch of history or science, and do it tolerably well. But to 
tackle this great day’s work of making your Providence or my Boston, or 
somebody’s New York really look like God’s heavenly and holy city, that 
calls for a different sort of god. Electricity will not serve. Unless we are 
to take the ostrich for our patron saint and try to solve difficulties by hid- 
ing our heads in the sand, there is just one way to take. We desire to 
stand up to our great task like men, never faltering, never faint-hearted, but 
being for the faint-hearted like that splendid figure in the second part of 
“Pilgrim’s Progress”, Captain Great-Heart. Where shall the Captain 
Great-Heart, standing for the redemption of society, find the secret of his 
great-heartedness? There is only one place where men who are seeking to 
do this great work can find it, and that is in the revelation of a personal 
God; who, through His friendship, promises to them all His power and 
mind and goodness and might. We are shut up to Christ because He is 
the one perfect revelation of a personal God, and because we would fain do 
a man’s whole work before we die. And so we say to Him, as Peter 
said to Him in our name, “ Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the 
words of eternal life’”’. 


* JESUS’ CONTROVERSIES WITH THE JEWS. 
(SEE CHAPTERS 7-10.) 


BY REV. MELANCTHON W. JACOBUS, D. D., 


HosMER PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS AND CRITICISM, HARTFORD 


THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, HARTFORD, CONN. 


To understand Jesus’ controversies with the Jews we must understand 
the Jews with whom the controversies were held, and to understand the 
Jews we must read their history from the time they returned from their 
exile to re-occupy the Holy Land. 

That history divides itself into three periods: The Persian period, 
extending from 538 to 332, B. C.; the Greek period, from 332 to 167, B. C., 
and the Maccabean period, from 167 to 63, B. C., when Syria became a 
Roman province. 

Of the Persian period, little is known in detail. In general, the condi- 
tion of the people was sad. The rule was oppressive, especially towards 
the close of the period, so that Alexander and his armies were hailed as 
divine deliverers. In the Greek period the condition at first was favorable, 
but towards the close it degenerated, reaching its climax of oppression and 
corruption in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, against whose reckless 
desecration of the temple and brutal imposition of infamous laws there 
arose the famous revolt of the Maccabees. 

Now, this revolt was in its essence a religious rebellion, crystalizing 
itself in a party of national opposition to foreign rule; but as the revolt pro- 
ceeded, the national party developed in the direction of political self-seek- 
ing, making its aim and passion official power rather than religious rights. 
As a consequence, the old_ religious element in the party separated itself 
into a party of its own, a party whose opposition was more against the 
national party, which had become political, than against the foreign rule 
itself. 

As this religious party, however, began to develop more zeal for reli- 
gion than for the nation, there separated from it still another party, a party 
of revolutionary fanaticism, whose opposition was thrown against both the 
other parties, while, as this national party in its political selfseeking came 
to throw itself in favor of the foreign rule it had first opposed, there arose 
another party of like political cast, but of no religious element, gathering 
around the reigning family in Palestine, and having for its object the 
re-establishment of the Herodian kingdom in the spirit of its traditional 
policy, namely, the union of Judaism and Hellenism. This was a party 


* Delivered at the Fourth Conference, held at Grace Episcopal Church, January 13, 1004. 


161 


162 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


whose opposition was against all the three parties as far as they were reli- 
gious, but whose favor was extended toward them all as far as they were 
political. 

There is no need of my naming these parties I have described. They 
are named in their description. The party seeking political gain was the 
party of the Sadducees, the party which represented in itself one of the two 
great tendencies present in the nation after its return from the exile—the 
tendency to mingle with the heathen world, a tendency characteristic of the 
priestly aristocracy among the Jews. The religiously separating party was 
the party of the Pharisees, the party which represented in itself the other 
great tendency present after the exile—the tendency to keep aloof from 
heathendom and preserve the traditional religion pure, a tendency charac- 
teristic of the people of the Jews. The fanatical party was the party of the 
Zealots, the party which believed in the sword to save the cause, a party 
reckless in its zeal but strangely sincere in its recklessness, a party to which 
Ben Hur might have belonged, a party which had a representative in the 
apostolic circle. The dynastic party was the party of the Herodians, a 
party which gathered around the political leadership that professed to be 
religious, but whose union of religion and culture reduced religion to a hol- 
low farce and culture to a mimicry, and left nothing real but politics. 

Now, if these parties could have been kept apart, there might have con- 
fronted Jesus a clear cut line between politics and religion. But how was it 
possible for them to be kept apart? With the Jew, religion was a part of 
his national life, and national life was a part of his religion. No more 
really so was it in Scotland in the time of the Covenanters, or in Holland in 
the time of the Spanish rule, than it was in Judea in the time of Herod and 
Pontius Pilate. As a matter of fact, much as the Pharisees disavowed poli- 
tics, and the Sadducees disavowed devotion to the Mosaic law, the national 
fortunes of the Jews drew these two parties into alliances and then again 
into oppositions that brought religion and politics into an inextricable 
tangle in the nation’s life, while the Herodians professed such religion as 
they had for purely political ends, and the Zealots practiced such politics as 
they dared with a purely religious spirit. 

To be sure, in all this tangle of the secular and the religious, there was, 
as there always is, an element among the people who kept religion pure. 
You see it in such persons as Simeon and Anna, in the Baptist and his dis- 
ciples, and the family and kins-folk from which the Baptist and Jesus Him- 
self came. You see it also in a distinctive group of religionists, who were 
not a party, or even a sect, but rather a brotherhood who came from the 
same pious stock as the Pharisees, but, unlike them in their yielding to 
politics, separated themselves even from the ordinary life of men—the 
Essenes, who represented in themselves a deep underlying tendency always 
present in the popular Jewish mind, a tendency to thoughtfulness on 
religious things. 

These were the Jews with whom Jesus had to deal. This was the 
atmosphere in which His ministry was cast. Was it possible, then, for con- 


JESUS’ CONTROVERSIES WITH THE JEWS. 163 


troversy not to rise? Bring before this politico-religious party life the spir- 
itual mission of Jesus, confront the conceptions of character which it created 
with the spiritual personality, the divinely spiritual self of Jesus, and what 
must have happened? The Sadducees would oppose it all, because Jesus’ 
teachings were based on piety and not on culture, while Jesus Himself 
involved a divine revelation and not an agnostic skepticism. The Pharisees 
would resent it all, because Jesus and His teachings laid the hand on legal- 
istic ceremony and swept it away. The Zealots would not understand it, 
because Jesus did not reveal Himself along the line of fire and sword. The 
Herodians would have nothing to do with it, because Jesus had nothing to 
do with the artificiality of their ideas and the politics of their aims. Even 
the Essenes, who might be supposed to be religiously and spiritually nearest 
to it, would turn against it, because Jesus would not turn against the every- 
day life and experience of men. And so it came that, though these parties 
hated each other, time and again combinations among them threw their 
forces against Jesus and His work. There was Jesus’ healing of the with- 
ered hand on the Sabbath day. What cared the Herodians for the Sabbath 
law and custom? Yet they plotted with the Pharisees against His life. 
There was the demand for a sign from heaven. What belief had the Sad- 
ducees in heaven or a sign from there? Yet they united with the Pharisees 
in demanding it. There was the open claim of His Messiahship which 
Jesus placed before the people’s leaders in the holy week, and instinctively 
Pharisee, Sadducee, and Herodians tried to break it down. It was the one 
great fact of a spiritual movement in the midst of them, the one great fact of 
a supremely spiritual personality among them, the one great fact of an abso- 
lutely spiritual claim before them that broke in upon the dream of their 
political ideals, that smote the indifference of their materialism, that crushed 
the self-conceit of their ceremonialism, and brought them all to realize that 
if the Galilean won His way their day of power and life was gone. 

Now take all this and see the light it throws upon the Fourth Gospel. 
There is a great difference between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of 
John, and the greatness of that difference lies at the point of Jesus’ dis- 
courses. In the Synoptists they are parables of fields and flowers, of home 
and business life, plain and simple talks on the common themes of every 
day. In the Gospel of John they are deep and profound discourses on 
themes transcending human experience, but the striking thing about these 
transcendental themes is that they gather around the one subject of Jesus 
Himself and His relation to God and the unseen universe. 

Why this marked difference between this Fourth Gospel and the rest? 
Is it that the Synoptists alone give us the story of Jesus’ ministry, the 
Fourth Gospel coming from some later writer who knew more of Greek 
philosophy than he did of Jesus’ teaching? Could the same Jesus not give 
both kinds of teaching? Turn over the Gospel pages, and you will see that 
significantly the Synoptic talks were given, almost all of them, in the early 
part of Jesus’ ministry to the peasant folk of Galilee, the simple-minded 
people to whom these simple talks brought apprehension of God’s spiritual 


164 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


truth, while the Fourth Gospel discourses were given, almost all of them, in 
the later part of Jesus’ ministry to the ecclesiastical Jews of Jerusalem, the 
speculative, controversial, the politically scheming Jews, whose one objec- 
tion to Jesus was that He claimed to have a spiritual truth from God to 
declare. 

You see then what this gathering of the Fourth Gospel themes around 
the person and self of Jesus means. It is not the poetizing of a philo- 
sophic writer who knew naught of Jesus or His truth. These discourses 
are Jesus’ teaching. They are the teaching of the same Jesus who speaks 
to us in the Sermon on the Mount and the parables by the sea, only now He 
is confronting the Jews’ materialism, their political, self-seeking, nationalizing 
materialism, with the great claims of the spiritualism of a God who must be 
worshipped in spirit and truth, and who could be seen and known only in 
the spiritual Lordship of Jesus Himself over personal character and life. 
It was the controversy which came naturally at the close of Jesus’ ministry, 
as the opposition to Him by the religious leaders came to its inevitable issue, 
and Jesus’ claims against it came to their inevitable declaration in the full. 

Now, go through the scenes the Fourth Gospel gives us, and see how 
all this works itself out. 

1. There is Jesus in Jerusalem at the Pool of Bethesda. The impotent 
man is lying on the threshold of supposed healing, with no one to help him 
across. Jesus comes and says to him, ‘“ Arise, take up thy bed and walk”, 
and immediately the man was made whole, took up his bed and walked; 
and the same day was the Sabbath. Ah, there wasthe trouble! The scribes 
and Pharisees are quick to the scent. They stop the man: ‘It isthe Sabbath 
Day, knowest thou not?’ Everyone in Jerusalem knew that, if he knew 
nothing else. “It is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed”. Everyone knew 
that, too. ‘‘ But He that made me whole, the same said unto me, ‘ Take up 
thy bed and walk’”. ‘Who made thee whole?” “I know not”. But He 
must be brought to know, for the issue between the Pharisees and Jesus 
must be straightway drawn. So Jesus came and disclosed Himself to him, 
in order that he might tell the Pharisees. And he told them, and imme- 
diately they began to persecute Jesus and to seek to slay Him, because He 
laid His hand upon the burdened ritualism of the Sabbath Day to break it 
down. But why draw the issue? Why not leave the Pharisees to the idea 
of their Sabbath Day? Simply because the Pharisees must come to know 
that the Sabbath finds itself in no lordship over man, but only in such a 
service to him as is possible by the lordship over it of Jesus Christ. The 
Sabbath must be saved from the materialism of the scribes. The spiritual 
Christ must be put in authority and power over it. 

2. There is Jesus in Jerusalem again. It is the Feast of Dedication. 
The people are in a great quandary about Him. Some say that He isa good 
man; others say He deceives the people. Some say that He is the Christ; 
others, that He has a devil. Murmuring and division among the people 
because they could not understand how He could heal diseases, cure infirm- 
ities, cast out demons, raise the dead, show all the wonder marks of the 


JESUS’ CONTROVERSIES WITH THE JEWS. 165 


. 

Messiah and yet not reveal Himself to the world, the world of the nation’s 
politics, the world of the nation’s policy against Rome. Into all this con- 
fusion Jesus steps, and on that last great day of the Feast, when the sending 
of the great procession with its symbolic water of Messianic refreshing 
testified to the people’s confession that the Messiah had not yet come, the 
Messiah they looked for, on that great day He stands, and over against all 
this bald materialism of religion lifts up Himself in full announcement of 
His spiritual self and person. ‘If any man thirst, let him come unto Me 
and drink”’. 

O, the clearness of the issue! The people of God confessing no Messiah 
had come, and the Messiah in their midst! O, the pathos of the situation! 
The raging thirst for national power and life, and no thought of quenching 
it anywhere save at the dried up wells of politics and culture, and the living 
water there at their hand! The helpless groping after a light, that groping 
in the darkness of the world around them, and no thought of finding it apart 
from the zgvis fatuus of ritualism and revolution, and the light of life shining 
before their eyes! The constant preblem of their relationship to God, and 
no idea of solving it save only through a hold upon the history of the past; 
the promises, the covenant, the fathers, Abraham, everything back to that, 
and there among them He Who is before Abraham was! The ever present 
irritation of their dispersion in the world, the ever sounding cry for a reali- 
zing of the covenant fold and the covenant care, for God’s presence with its 
mastering power, and no conception of how to secure this all, save through 
the materialism of life, and there pleading with them the One Who was the 
door of the sheep; the Good Shepherd, Who was ready to give unto them 
eternal life, and from Whose hand nothing would ever pluck them away! 

And the days pass on while the shadows of Calvary gather.. The Jews 
do not see them; the disciples do not perceive them; no one is conscious of 
them save Him Who had known of them all along and Whose soul was 
troubled through them and exalted by them as no human soul could be. 
“Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but 
if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit”. The hour was come that the Son of 
Man should be glorified. The judgment of the Jews against the Christ was 
fast approaching, but it should be a judgment of the Christ against the Jews. 
“ Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be 
cast out, and I ”—oh, how the whole thing gathers up in the Christ Himself! 
—‘and J, if Zbe lifted up, shall draw all men unto Me”. And the people 
could comprehend naught of it, save to say, ‘‘ How sayest Thou, the Son of 
Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” 

Is it any wonder that as the shadows came they fell with greater dark- 
ness on the Jews than they did on the Christ? A few months before, Jesus 
had said to them: “I am the bread of life; he that cometh to Me shall 
never hunger; he that believeth on Me shall never thirst”. And now they 
were dragging Him up before Pilate, and crying, “A malefactor! Crucify 
Him”. Truly “The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness appre- 
hended it not”. To Pilate Jesus might say: ‘I came into the world that 


166 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


I might bear witness to the truth”’, and Pilate reply, ‘“‘ What is truth?” and 
put the truth upon the cross and let it die, and it signified but little to him, 
a pagan mind of pagan training. What else might we expect? But that 
throughout His ministry Jesus should have held Himself up before the 
people of God and declared Himself to them as the truth, and they cry out 
against Him as the lie! O Christ, how deep the gulf between Thy spiritual 
self and the materialism of the world! 

And they led Him away, and the soldiers crucified Him, and Pilate 
wrote over His head ‘‘The King of the Jews’’, and the Jews mocked and 
railed at Him: “If Thou be the King of the Jews, come down from the 
cross and we will believe Thee”. And as the darkness fell upon them and 
the quaking earth rocked beneath their feet, they smote upon their breasts 
and returned to their homes and said: ‘ The light of this imposter has gone 
out”. Yes, so it had, but only that it might burst forth again in resurrection 
splendor. Yet they saw it not, for the darkness of their souls remained 
within them; and when the risen Christ was proclaimed the Saviour of the 
world they killed the men who preached Him as they had killed the Christ 
Himself, because ever stands the darkness of the world against the light of 
God, ever blind to it and so ever ignorant of it, ever unreceptive toward it 
and so ever hateful of it, till we come to realize that truth of truths—‘ This 
alone is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent”’. 


*UNBELIEF THE FUNDAMENTAL SIN. 
BY REV. B. L. WHITMAN, D. D., LL. D., 


PASTOR OF THE FirrH BAPTIST CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA, Pa. 


The profoundest text book in the world on Psychology is one that is 
seldom used, either by teacher or by pupil. The greatest master of the 
human mind is the last quoted in class room or laboratory. Thattext book 
is the New Testament, and that master is Christ. We toss upon seas of 
distraction, blown hither and thither by winds of uncertainty and reach no 
haven, because we can not get or keep our course. We talk learnedly and 
ineffectively of doubt and illusion and hallucination and bootless quest of 
truth, because the very conditions of truth are wanting in us. We travel 
according to the rules of logic, and reach, not a conclusion, but a new and 
still more unmanageable term in a syllogism. We search the cold heights 
of intellect by the colder light of reason, and find, not a soul but a phantom. 
We call upon God and are answered by the echo of our own cry. We build 
a fool’s paradise and trip its ways lightly in the dance of death, and wonder 
why life is not greater and more beautiful. And when we seek escape from 
our prison-house of folly, we follow ways that lead everywhere except to 
freedom. We shut our eyes to eviland take the road of blind optimism that 
runs swiftly to the land of disillusionment. We shut our eyes to good and 
take the road of blinder pessimism that runs more swiftly still to the abyss 
of despair. We shut our eyes to fact altogether, and take the road of skep- 
ticism that begins in one darkness and ends in another. The way of self- 
knowledge and self-surrender we do not take, and Christ says that that is 
the only way that leads to freedom.. Thus our problem remains unsettled 
and life has no rest, because in our search for truth we pass truth by unrecog- 
nized. 

None the less the search for truth goes on. And this is well. For 
man’s first duty in a world of reality is to face the facts. Whatever the 
theoretical difficulties of a philosophy of knowledge, the every-day man 
assumes that the facts that concern his life are worth knowing and that they 
can be known. Knowledge is relative, no doubt. We know things only as 
they affect us. But as long as the only condition on which a rational universe 
can be known at all is the condition that it shall keep faith with itself in all 
its parts, the values that we find written in the equations of life must have 
some kind of consistency throughout the system. That which the world is 
to me it must be in its measure to every being like me, under like conditions, 
wherever found. And for beings conceivably unlike me and for conditions 
different from mine, the world must have its meaning, the values still pro- 


Delivered at the Fourth Conference, held at Grace Episcopal Church, January 13, 1904. 


167 


168 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


portional, and, so far as the other life and mine have common bonds, con- 
vertible. The truth which to me is matter of slow reasoning may be to 
another matter of intuition. But for me and for that other the truth is not 
two truths but one. 

This is only saying that the universe will keep faith with us as it keeps 
faith with itself. Limitations will still hedge us about, and futility attend 
much of our effort, but up to the very edge of our power the whole universe 
is ours, and what we can compass we may keep. Faith is the first great 
note of human sanity, faith in the honesty of the universe and faith in one’s 
own honesty in dealing with the universe. 

Now faith is only one of an exceedingly rich group of words expressing 
a disposition toward fair dealing. Belief, confidence, conviction, assurance, 
trust,—we could multiply the list many times without exhausting the terms 
properly belonging in it. And in them all we find the same dominant note. 
It is the note of harmony, and constantly assures us that the universe and 
we belong together. That which I see and hear and touch I cannot doubt 
and live. And when the facts are certified to me, not by the warrant of my 
own senses but by the senses of another, just as far as I have confidence in 
that other I accept his experience as valid within the limits where it may 
properly apply. And when it is no sense at all, my own or another’s, but an 
experience that has no traceable connection with the senses, that brings me 
the fact which concerns me next, if the fact is duly certified I shall not doubt 
it. Now the data of our mental and spiritual life though mediated by sense 
are not sensible, for when I have them they are facts of consciousness, and 
only more or less elaborate processes of reasoning tell us that it is through 
the senses that certain of those facts of consciousness arise. Those processes 
sufficiently repeated and suitably extended give us our world. The thing 
we can never doubt and never be rid of is the fact of consciousness. What 
is there is there. And being there it must be explained and accounted for. 
To explain and account for part of these facts, we assume a material world. 
To explain and account for another part we assume a spiritual world. To get 
the whole implication of these worlds we are summoned to still further 
explanation and accounting, and so our universe or complete world comes 
to view. 

Conscious life, therefore, is a life of faith. I find certain facts within 
me which I cannot doubt if I would. Interrogate them I may, nay must. 
Doubt them I neither do nor can. And by a prodigious act of faith I pass 
from that world of consciousness toa world of which I know nothing except 
as the key to its understanding is within me, and the only warrant for whose 
existence at all, so far as I can see, is my need of it. This applies equally 
to the world of matter and to the world of spirit. In other words, ‘he 
universe itself is built by faith. 

Of course this does not mean that the universe is only a creation of the 
mind. It means that I proceed to the knowledge of the universe by faith. 
My universe is created by faith. But this creation is creation only as a 
process of personal experience. So far as the universe itself is concerned 


UNBELIEF THE FUNDAMENTAL SIN. 169 


my creation is a finding. It is there and I get toknowit. But I am sure of 
it and I can have dealings with it on the basis of faith and faith alone. 

How shall we define this process or act of faith? By what words can 
we make clear to ourselves what we mean when we say we believe? I 
believe a thing when I accept it asreal. Faith, then, may be defined as the 
feeling of reality. It isthe assent, not of the mind only but also of the heart 
and will, whatever there is in the soul that grips. There are many specific 
outgoings of faith, as there are many forms of reality. There is physical 
reality. So sense perception has its corresponding feeling of reality. There 
is intellectual reality. So the reasoned conclusion will have its corresponding 
feeling of reality. There is esthetic reality. So the esthetic deliverance 
will have its corresponding feeling of reality. There is moral reality. So 
determinations of good and evil will have their corresponding feeling of 
reality. There is a distinctively spiritual world. So the deeper judgments 
of the soul will have their corresponding feeling of reality. But the feeling 
is in essence one. It is just the soul saying, ‘‘ This I find tobe true”. The 
thing is there and I have dealings with it. 

One caution should be noted. Asa purely subjective experience what 
I find so is so. But my finding a thing so does not make the thing really so 
in the world that transcends purely personal experience. Sometimes things 
get into the mind that get nowhere else. We are obliged, therefore, more 
or less constantly to test the contents of our mind, to make sure that the reality 
we think we hold is real. Illusion, delusion, hallucination, dream, to say 
nothing of the thousand shapes the unsound brain will conjure into being,— 
these words stand for subjective reality that has no corresponding reality in 
the external world. Part of the business of every waking hour is to make 
sure that our faiths represent actual relations between ourselves and the 
universe. The faith with which we are concerned to-day is always and 
everywhere the living consent of the soul to have commerce with reality. 

It is hardly necessary, but let us say it, faith needs no justification. 
We can neither add to its essential character nor take away from it. // zs. 
And it is what itis. Like any other fact of experience it has to be taken as 
itis found. Just as the mind brings with it the power to know and to feel 
and to will, so it brings with it the power to believe. We cannot analyze it, 
because it is a simple, ultimate mental fact. We cannot go behind it, be- 
cause it is at the beginning. Faith is part of the natural equipment of the 
normal soul. 

And we must not forget that unbelief may be as legitimate as belief. 
The justification of belief is the justification of unbelief no less. This is 
true whether by unbelief we mean the negation of belief or positive dis- 
belief. Let me be bidden to believe something that takes no hold upon my 
life. The thing may be true, but it means nothing to me. There may be 
mountains of gold in the moon. I know nothing about it. To me it is not 
a living hypothesis. If you ask me to believe it notwithstanding this, I 
can only tell you that I do not believe. There is no fact in my life upon 
which such a proposition takes hold. So with disbelief. Letme be assured 


170 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


that in Providence there are men who habitually ignore the laws of gravity. 
When they wish to go from one place to another they do not walk or ride, 
they simply think of going and they are there. You tell me that such men 
may be found in all parts of the city, on Westminster Street, on Weybosset, 
on College Hill. What is my problem? I cast about within me for some 
fact of experience on which this new fact can take hold. I findnone. More 
than that, this proposed fact contradicts every fact of my experience, so that 
my entire life is a protest against its acceptance. Whatshall Ido? Nothing. 
Yet that is not quite what I shall do. I shall do nothing, but I shall decide 
that the man who requires such faith of me is deluded, unless I exercise the 
right of sound reason to set him down asa liar. Believe I cannot. Dis- 
believe I must. 

What the mind does is to assent to whatit finds. If its outreach in any 
direction ends in the discovery of nothing, there is no call upon the soul for 
faith. Belief is the soul’s assent to what it finds to be there. The grounds 
on which the soul is satisfied are many and of many kinds. I can find an 
object by my own eyes and ears and hands. I can find it by the eyes and 
ears and hands of another. I can find it without eyes and ears and hands, 
my own or another’s, by signs which eyes and ears and hands can neither 
take nor interpret. But whenever and however found, reality duly certified 
by relation to the unquestionable facts of consciousness calls for assent in 
living terms. The character of the response will bear some ratio in form 
and value to the reality with which one enters into relation. If I believe 
that two and two make four, I will make my reckonings accordingly. If I 
believe that man is mortal, I will make my plans accordingly. If I believe 
that woolen is fitter material for clothing in winter than silk or cotton, I will 
dress for the cold in woolen. If I believe that a certain course of business 
procedure is profitable, I will follow that course. If I believe that it is 
better to be well than sick, I will seek health. IfI believe that it is my duty 
to think of others rather than of myself, I will think of others before I think 
of myself. If I believe in God, I will serve and worship Him. What aman 
assents to and accepts as real, shapes his life. For good or for evil, belief 
determines conduct. Not what aman calls his belief, but his real belief 
shapes his life. 

The thing that is natural and right for the normal man is what the 
normal man will do. But in the face of all that is natural and right we find 
men failing to do what normal life requires. Hereis a man to whom reason 
opens the way of honor and profit, and instead of taking that way the man 
walks straight to uncleanness and poverty. Here isa man who knows where 
duty lies, and he turns to the end of the world that lies farthest from duty. 
Here are arguments that cannot be gainsaid or denied, and yet they fall 
unheeded. Here is a world that is absolutely essential to the explanation 
of the world in which men live, and behold men treat it as less than a name. 
What is the result? Disorder in the whole life in proportion to the violation 
of the fundamental demand of reason, that belief shall respond to fact duly 
certified and properly presented. The failures of which we now speak are 


UNBELIEF THE FUNDAMENTAL SIN. 171 


so many cases of refusal to keep faith with the universe. This should be 
impossible. Were it not for the awful power of the human will to shape its 
own ways it would beimpossible. But the naked fact stands, that of several 
possible courses I myself determine which I shall follow: throwing the 
weight of desire upon the side of this course as against that, recalling the 
decision on the point of execution, appealing to conscience or some obliga- 
tion that just now suddenly is seen to be precious, swaying, shaping, mould- 
ing, finally deciding beyond recall the path I shall take. I cannot explain 
how this is done. I simply find myself doing it, falling or rising by the 
decision. So, close by the glory of life we find life’s shame. In response 
to the fundamental demand of reason we find a thorough-going violation of 
the order of the universe. At the very point where faith should be final and 
complete, we find faith broken or reversed altogether. It is a monstrous 
thing. For if it is a wrong to the soul to believe without evidence, to believe 
against evidence is a crime against the universe. 

How is this monstrous thing possible? That which should be impossible 
is not impossible, as a thousand bitter experiences show. I see the better. 
I see it to be the better. I approve it as the better. I follow the worse. 
So the unnatural thing is done. But how can we refuse to decide by the 
evidence? The answer must lie in some kind of mental and moral disorder. 
One has to bear in mind the fact that there are many forms of reality. 
There is a world of flesh as well as a world of spirit. The experiences of 
the flesh are real as truly, if not as permanently, as those of thespirit. And 
in experience we find many elements which, though not real in valid sense, 
have the appearance of reality. Error consists in the acceptance of the 
invalid for the valid. It is possible for such acceptance to be so often 
repeated that practical reversal of normal conditions of life takes place. 
Thus what at first looks like mere intellectual and moral revolt turns out to 
be mental and moral dislocation. Lives helplessly halt and blind and 
withered go stumbling along the world’s highway, some of them crying out 
for help, some, perhaps most, neither crying nor caring for help. 

We are standing face to face with the inscrutable mystery of life set to 
evil. The fact of such life is only too apparent. The world is full of it, our 
world and the great world of men. Intemperate men, impure men, dishon- 
est men, deceitful men, cruel men, bad men of every kind live their evil life 
and find all the happiness they find at all in fleshly courses. And the world 
lends itself to evil uses apparently with as little reluctance as it does to 
good. The fact is, that what we call evil and good take on their character 
as evil and good only when touched and determined by will.. The world is 
the great field in which the dove finds grain and the vulture finds carrion. 
What one takes to the world determines what one takes from the world. 
The great question concerns, not grain and carrion, but dove and vulture. 
At bottom the question of life is a question, not of things but of people. 
And the set of life toward the worse is what we mean by the evil will. It is 
the identification of self with the lower, the coarser, the worse elements of 
the world. 


172 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


But every mental act does more than bring itself to pass. It sets into 
effect certain influences in the outer world. It bears certain fruit in the 
world of the soul. It is with the inner world that we are concerned just 
now. A choice often repeated becomes the permanent choice. The act 
often repeated becomes the habit, the settled course of life. So we are con- 
stantly making and unmaking ourselves. Suppose that the tendency toward 
evil that manifests itself in the evil will gets reinforcement from the daily 
choice. The effect is seen in daily hardening of habit toward a fixed state 
of evil. So every choice in a given direction makes more inevitable later 
choice in that direction, till presently no other direction is thought of or 
desired. How far may this hardening go? Milton puts into the mouth of 
Satan the awful words, ‘“ Evil, be thou my good.” In such a case the pro- 
cess goes so far as to reach complete reversal of values. 

Is the choice of Satan psychologically possible? A thousand cases of 
like choice, though perhaps less fixed and less confessed, make answer, 
yes. Ambition, lust, avarice, jealousy, envy, hate fill the breast with seeth- 
ing passion, till the very life is hell. ‘‘ Which way I fly is hell, myself am 
hell”. Not simply Satan on his throne says that, but multitudes of men 
who have no throne, but who do Satan’s work and live his life in acknowl- 
edged or unacknowledged fellowship with him. The fact is central to life, 
that evil choice repeated makes further evil choice probable, till no other 
choice is possible. 

And yet, responsibility cannot be disclaimed. If the choice has 
become inevitable, how can one be held accountable for it? Well maya 
man say, when caught in the grip of the evil will, ““I could not choose 
otherwise than as I chose inthis’. Truer confession than that, lips never 
made.’ The man could not have chosen otherwise than as he did. But the 
inevitableness of that choice lay in earlier choices. Back and back and 
back we press until we reach a point in the man’s life where other choice 
was possible. Then, under the influence of passion or ignorance or 
unworthy motive, the man turned from the better way. There in the 
choice of the worse was the beginning of the way whose end is this bond- 
age toevil. And the man cannot disclaim responsibility for the result. 
For choice is nothing but the soul taking the portion that seems to it 
good. Will is only the soul set to accomplish the purpose the soul has set 
for itself. When we do ill we are not thrust into the ill by a fate that com- 
pels us so to cast ourselves away. The only fate that can touch a man to 
make or mar him is himself. What the machinery of the universe does is 
to weave the choice of the hour into the fabric of life. The doctrine of 
fate is no myth, but God’s truth plainly spoken. Only, man’s fate is the 
fixing of man’s choice, the projection of himself upon eternity. For what 
he is, therefore, at a given hour, the man must hold himself accountable, 
and himself alone. In that hour he can no longer help being what he is, 
but what made him what he is in that hour was his own choice, deliberate 
or indifferent. The web of life is of our own weaving. 

The natural history of the evil will helps us to understand why the 


UNBELIEF THE FUNDAMENTAL SIN. 173 


requirements of righteousness are so unwelcome to the man who has cast 
in his lot with unrighteousness. The set of life toward the worse reveals 
two worlds within the great world. In one world is all that we call good. 
In the other is all that we call evil. There isa distinct type of life for each of 
these worlds. By his conformity to one or the other of the two types a man 
declares his fellowship. Jesus throws this conformity into the striking terms 
of family fellowship. “I am of My Father God. You are of your father 
the devil. What I see My Father do Ido. What you see your father do 
youdo”. And as the family life of God is good, the life of those who share 
the family fellowship with God will be good. As the family life of the devil 
is bad, those who share the family fellowship of the devil will be bad. And 
as there is nothing in common between the two families, the life of each 
cannot but seem unbeautiful to the other. Jesus says plainly that the 
opposition He had to meet was due to something other than dislike of Him. 
It was want of understanding of the things with which His life was filled, 
And those who did not understand did more than fail to understand: they 
misunderstood. They could not see what Jesus saw or hear what Jesus 
heard because their whole life belonged in a different sphere from His. 
When the sense of the divine has gone out of the life no work will seem 
divine. For those who do not know God the word of Jesus can have no 
meaning as the word of God. To those who have shut heaven out of the 
life the very condition by which a revelation can be understood is wanting. 
By that test Jesus at once tried and condemned the men of His day. “If 
any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be 
of God or whether I speak of Myself”. ‘‘I speak the things which I have 
seen with My Father, and ye also do the things which ye have heard with 
your father. Ye do the works of your father. If God were your father, ye 
would love Me, for I came forth and am come from God; for neither have 
I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do ye not understand My speech? 
Even because ye cannot hear My word. Ye are of your father the devil, 
and the lusts of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from 
the beginning, and stood not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. 
When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar and the 
father thereof. But because I say the truth ye believe Me not, because ye 
are not of God”’. 

The attitude of agiven moment is pre-determined. The slow setting 
of life toward good or toward evil goes into it. One’s total belief is engaged 
in the decision of a given question. My entire relation to party and country 
and race makes practically certain beforehand what I shall think of the new 
special political problem. My entire religious experience is involved in the 
answer to the new religious question, making it possible for any one who 
knows me thoroughly to feel sure in advance what that'answer will be. As 
soon as one knows the family history of the men to whom Jesus speaks, one 
may be confident of the response they will make to the divine demand. 
For they are men whom selfishness has blinded till their understanding is 
darkened, and their judgment gone utterly astray. The best outline of the 


174 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


history of human error ever written is in the first chapter of Romans. Men 
committed the sin of unclear judgment, with the result that succeeding 
judgment became less and less clear, till complete reversals of value were 
inevitable, and life took on a new and strange character. ‘“ Professing 
themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the 
incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of 
four-footed beasts and creeping things”. The mystery of the power of 
choice remains, and the greater mystery of the use of that power unworthily. 
What the apostle shows is simply the movement of man’s mind in the pro- - 
cess of his undoing. Bad grows to worse. ‘‘ Wherefore God gave them up 
in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness: for that they exchanged the 
truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than 
the Creator’’. Worse grows to worst. ‘‘ Even as they refused to have 
God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those 
things which are not convenient ; being filled with all unrighteousness, wick- 
edness, covetousness, maliciousness ; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, 
malignity ; whisperers, back-biters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boast- 
ful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, 
covenant breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful: who, knowing the 
ordinance of God that they which practice such things are worthy of death, 
not only do the same, but also consent with those who practice them”. 
There is little need of seeking further for an explanation of the judgment 
that lacks judgment and the life that is death. Mind and heart and will are 
grouped together. And the awful fact is that this outworking is only an 
outworking. What men do they do themselves. In this blackest picture 
ever painted the central fact is man’s own choice of evil. God let them go 
their way. The evil they thought and wrought to their undoing was their 
own. 

To men who have thus chosen, the divine demand is an impossible 
demand. Self-centered, self-sufficient, self'seekmg—what answer can a 
man make to the demand of self-surrender? For the call of God in Christ 
Jesus is precisely that. As Professor Flint so well says of Christian faith, 
“It is a selfsurrender, an acceptance of Christ as of God made wisdom, 
righteousness, sanctification, and redemption unto us; a supreme trust in 
Christ based on a distinctive conviction as to His character and His rela- 
tionship both toGod and man”. The attitude of the wilful life toward such 
a demand is not hard toname. Failure to accept is not so much failure as 
refusal. The mood of such a life is not defect but defiance. Alienation of 
mind ends always in hostility of will. 

When once the principle of the life is fixed every experience is a confir- 
mation of it. So the world becomes a mighty instrument of good or evil, 
according to the life it touches. The sun shining upon a healthy tree 
means life and ever more life. Upon a dead tree the shining means com- 
pleter death. Rain floods the foliage with fresh greenness. The fallen 
leaves it turns into a sodden mass. Life and death are not in the sun and 
rain, but in that on which they fall. It is within ourselves that we shall find 


UNBELIEF THE FUNDAMENTAL SIN. 175 


the sentence of life and death. When the spirit fell at Pentecost, to some 
of the lookers-on the marvel seemed a serious thing and they questioned, 
‘saying, ‘‘ What meaneth this?” To others it was matter of mockery, and 
they said, “‘ They are full of new wine”. So the history of the truth runs in 
all times and places in them that are being saved and in them that are per- 
ishing: to the one the savor from death unto death; to the other the savor 
of life unto life. The life of God Himself is deeper death to the soul that 
closes itself against that life. 

What is the central principle of the unbelieving life? Its root and 
bloom and fruit are one. And that one is self. It begins in self. It 
matures in self—thinking self, feeling self, willing self. It ends in self. 
The heart of unbelief is selfishness. All else follows as a matter of course, 
want of sympathy, separation, opposition, revolt, open warfare. What is 
the use of specifying the multitudinous acts of sin when we have the princi- 
ple of sin? Why count the branches one by one when the pledge of them 
all is in the root, and we have the root? Out of the heart proceed the 
things that defile, and when we have the heart we have all that the heart 
makes sure. Men reject Christ because they have nothing in common with 
Him. Their unbelief is simply their unlikeness finding expression in speech 
and deed. 

But why keep citing rejection of Christ, as if that were a special proof 
of unbelief? Because it is a special proof of unbelief. The spirit and the 
words and the works of Jesus were divine. They were the spirit and words 
and works of God. To know Jesus was to know God. Not to see God in 
the life of Jesus was to show oneself incapable of seeing Him anywhere. 
Over and over Jesus said, ‘‘ Believe Me. But if you cannot yet believe Me, 
look at My works and believe what they say”. The works of God can 
come only from the life of God. The character of the works of Jesus was 
not doubted, even by those who hated the spirit by which they were 
wrought. That was the blasphemy which the judgment of God smote back 
upon the very lips of denial: insistence by men who knew better, that the 
divine work before their eyes was the work of the devil. But that was only 
the crowning denial, the full-voiced unbelief that did not shrink even from 
charging a lie upon the holiness of God. If that is not itself always the 
unpardonable sin, it is a sin that joins hands with the unpardonable sin. 

The rejection of Christ is only less vital. As long as there is possibil- 
ity of recognizing sin at all, the rejection of Christ will be recognized as 
sin. The men to whom the Spirit of God brings home conviction of sin find 
their quickened consciences responding most readily at that very point, as 
at last they see that all the while God has been looking upon them in the 
face of Jesus Christ. And though they may have been slow to acknowledge 
that there is such a thing as sin in the world, when once they realize what 
Jesus Christ means to the world they must say, ‘‘ Here at last is something 
that is unmistakably evil, my denial of the right of Jesus Christ to my life ”’. 
And in that evil lies the secret of all other evils that reveal in human life 
alienation from the mind of God and hostility to His will. Unbelief is the 
fundamental sin, the root from which every specific sin draws its life. 


176 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


And this is a teaching to take hold of the life of our own day. It 
belongs not simply to a far-off time and people but to the present and to us. 
The claims of Jesus Christ are as direct today as ever. The life of God is 
as realasever. ‘And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the 
only true God, and Him Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ ”’. 


*KNOWLEDGE OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS THROUGH THE DOING 
OF THE WILL OF GOD. 


By REV. FRANCIS J. McCONNELI, PH. D., 


PASTOR OF THE NEW YORK AVENUE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, BROOKLYN, 


INS: 


“Tf any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching whether it be of 
God or whether I speak of Myself”. (St. John 7:17—R. V.) 


Perhaps the best way of approach to an understanding of this passage 
is to take the words in their apparently simple and obvious intent. The 
easy and natural interpretation of the verse would be something as follows: 
If any man deliberately sets his will toward right doing he will have little 
difficulty in realizing the essential divineness of the teaching of Jesus. 
Knowledge arises out of deed. Let a man come to the words of Jesus with 
a deliberate intention to realize in his activity the highest kind of life, and 
he will find in the teaching of the Master a satisfaction which will convince 
him of the truth of the teaching. With continued doing of the Divine Will 
set forth in the revelation of Jesus there will come an increasingly solid 
deposit of conviction as to the truth of that revelation. We all know what 
- it is to set the will firmly in devotion to right doing; we all know too what 
it is to know truth,—to rest in the conviction that the deep satisfaction 
which a thought brings is a warrant for holding the thought as true. We all 
know, further, how this satisfaction comes out of experience in the practice 
of the truth. As the practice of the truth brings increased and deepened 
satisfaction, we attain to a certainty and immediacy of conviction which 
nothing can shake. This is what one coming to an interpretation of the text 
with experience in the search for certainty as to truth in real life would make 
out of the statement of Jesus. Such a one might put his thought into finer 
expression, but his conclusion would be substantially that here given. 

Jesus enforced as no other has ever done the thought that God is a 
person of moral quality—of highest and holiest righteousness. This con- 
ception is in one form or another probably at the bottom of most doing of 
the will of God. Let now a man determined to do the will of God hear the 
teaching of Jesus concerning the character of God. Will he not at once 
recognize the teaching as the goal for which his soul has been seeking? 
Suppose that he goes forward in his righteous doing with the teaching of 
Jesus definitely in mind. Is it not inconceivable that there should be any 
other result than a deepening conviction as to the truth of what Jesus has 
taught? Or take the teaching of Jesus as to the essential dignity and worthi- 


* Delivered at the Fourth Conference, held at Grace Episcopal Church, January 13, 1904. 


177 


 ,. =F) 


178 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


ness of humanity. Can there be better preparation for the full reception of 
this truth than the doing of the will of God, and if the life be constantly 
ordered with the teaching of Jesus as to the eternal worth of the moral will 
constantly before the mind, is it not inevitable that the soul should come to 
a settled conviction as to its own eternal value in the moral universe? Will 
not the doing of the will of God make the attitude of Jesus toward sin seem 
the one true attitude? Will not the reliance upon Jesus for spiritual life by 
one who is earnestly seeking to do right bring an assurance deep and stead- 
fast as to thetruth of the Master’s claim to be a veritable center of life-giving 
forces? If Christ is taken as king in the realm of right doing, He will prove 
by the actual results in the increased spiritual power of His followers that 
He is what He claims to be. The appeal is to life,—the same appeal that 
we make in the case of any claim,—the appeal to success. Can the claim 
make itself good? The final test of truth is just the satisfaction we attain 
as we think the truth. If the mind is at rest as it contemplates a revelation, 
the revelation is held to be true. Jesus did not come to set forth mere 
statements of facts; He came to reveal and enforce certain truths. The 
test of these truths is in the feeling of spiritual satisfaction which they bring. 
The doing of the will of God,—the taking of Jesus at His word and the 
practice of His revelation as a matter of moral doing will beget in the heart 
of the doer the satisfaction which is the real and vital witness. 

This would seem to be the meaning of the passage to one who should 
read it for its clear and plain intent. This natural interpretation must be 
allowed to stand if there is no good reason for going behind it. Jesus did 
not make hidden enigmas of statements like this. He spoke the language 
of real life, and while He loaded His words witha significance which eternity 
cannot exhaust, He no doubt intended us to start with the simple significance 
which lies upon the surface. 

There are some, however, who might grant a measure of consent to this 
general statement who would nevertheless insist that it gives not quite the 
right ground for religious certainty. 

First among the objectors might be put those who hold that no inner 
assurance is necessarily a part of the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. 
For example, an intelligent friend of mine recently attended an inquirer’s 
service held bya reputable and responsible clergyman in a neighboring city. 
The issue up for illumination was just this matter of Christian certainty. 
“How can I know the truth to be the truth” was the question of seeker after 
seeker. The response was stereotyped: ‘‘ We know that this is true because 
the Bible says so”. Some of these questions had to do with inner and vital 
experience. ‘‘ What ground have we for believing that we are sons of God ?” 
The answer was: ‘‘ Have you complied with the Biblical conditions so far 
as you know? If you have, you are His sons simply because the Bible says 
so. This is not a matter primarily of inner satisfaction. It is a matter of 
taking the word of God as true, no matter whether there be any mental rest 
or not”. The point is clear. This clergyman did what many others have 
been doing from the beginning. He found the ground for religious certainty 


KNOWLEDGE OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 179 


in the appeal to an external authority. The appeal to the authority settles 
all. There is no further need of argument. 

The truth of this putting all are willing to concede. If a seeker has 
become almost morbid through introspective search after some mysterious 
sign, no better advice could be given him than this encouragement to take 
the word of an external authority. Moreover, for very many, or for 
all of us during certain stages of experience, there must be this re- 
liance upon authority apart from any response of inner satisfaction. In 
one form or another the authoritative deliverance by the church, or the - 
parent, or the teacher, or the Book, must play the decisive part in the 
religious experience of immaturity. All these forms of authoritative 
utterance get their force, however, from the fact that out of centuries of 
Christian doing has come a race-wide and heart-deep satisfaction which 
lends inevitable momentum to the utterance. The Bible is believed not 
because of its being an external authority settling questions by lawyer-like 
dogmatism. It is received because. centuries of Christian doing have 
resulted in satisfaction deep and abiding. It rests not upon bodies of 
evidence of a merely historical and critical kind. If the revelation were 
merely the utterance of an external authority no one would trouble himself 
with it long enough to ask about evidences. 

Another objector declares that Christian certainty is not to be likened 
to our feeling of satisfaction as we become convinced of any other truth. 
He tells us that Christian certainty is a matter altogether apart from any 
other kind of certainty. If not altogether a miraculous revelation it stands 
aloof from the ordinary experiences of the mental life. It is a peculiar 
assurance which we recognize at once as coming from the divine spirit. It 
is a veritable witness of the Spirit and is not to be confounded with any 
lower order of knowing whatsoever. If we would know God we must have 
moments of rapt exaltation when we see things hidden from the foundation 
of the world. 

Here too there is a measure of truth. If it is possible for the soul to be 
completely transported by its enthusiasm for earthly objects, it is altogether 
unreasonable not to allow the same transports of enthusiasm for divine 
objects. If love for a friend or for a country produces mountain-top 
experiences, from which we learn more than from months of living at the 
lower levels, it is perfectly possible to have like moments of illumination as 
to the things of God. But there is nothing essentially miraculous about 
these experiences. So far as they have value in any case they come out of 
the solid devotion which manifests itself in doing. Ifthe ecstasy over friend, 
ot country, or God, comes not out of doing the will of country, or friend, or 
God, it has but little value. Let a man give himself to the real doing of 
the will of the Father and the firm conviction that he is on the path of life, 
may, in particular circumstances, rise to bursts of enthusiastic delight. 
But underneath all this is the rock basis of ethical, spiritual devotion. Out 
of this the knowledge comes. And whether the knowledge ever rises to 


the exalted plane or not, there will be for the doer of the will of God steady 
satisfaction of settled conviction. 


180 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Still another objector comes forward. He is evidently much impressed 
by the strictly scientific character of the day in which we live and tells us 
that this word of the Master is clearly an appeal to a strictly scientific test. 
If we wish to know Christian truth let us put it to a test of experiment just 
as the worker in the laboratory puts his discoveries to the test of experi- 
ment. 

The objector has evidently overlooked the distinction between matters 
of truth on the one hand and matters of objective fact on the other. The 
. body of Christ’s teaching is not a body of scientific facts. It is a setting 
forth of truths. Truths are not so much for detailed verification by 
laboratory experiment as for the proof which comes as they show their 
wearing qualities in the doubts and stresses which are so frequent in actual 
life. Yet the truth as it is in Jesus has just as scientific foundation as do 
those general conceptions which underlie scientific discovery. For these, 
too, are matters of belief and faith. They are the product of atmosphere 
and the general conditions which have been thrown around the mind. The 
work of the experimenter is in large part done before the test is made 
in the laboratory. It has been done in the shaping of the general 
conceptions which underlie all scientific procedure. It has been done in 
the scientific tendency given to the experimenter’s mind. On last analysis 
it would be found that this means that the experimenter has for years been 
holding certain general conceptions which have been capable of no further 
proof than the satisfaction which they give to the mind as it conducts its 
activities. Even the belief in ‘‘evolution” which is made so much of in 
these days rests not so completely upon this or that body of demonstrated 
fact as upon the general satisfaction which the thought gives the mind. 
The scientific investigator does not today lay much stress upon apriori 
methods, but he is an apriorist nevertheless. He may not be an apriorist 
in the sense that he holds to hard and fast statements of principle which 
are to guide his discoveries, but the principles are in his thought neverthe- 
less in the shape of certain expectations and tendencies and inner tests of 
satisfaction which really determine—if not what he shall find—at least the 
emphasis he shall put upon what he finds. 

So then we feel all the more inclined to hold fast the natural reading of 
the passage of this book of John concerning the knowledge of the truth 
through doing the will of God. The passage means that as we do the will 
of God there comes into our minds an increasing and solid deposit of 
conviction that we are upon the side of the truth in holding what Christ has 
brought us. The conviction may be that indefinable something which we 
ordinarily have in mind when we use the word about any matter of belief, or it 
may rise at times into something more definite, even the transport of an 
overwhelming enthusiasm. But in any case we have the heart of the truth 
when we say that Jesus meant just this, that out of Christian doing there 
comes increasing assurance as to the truth which Jesus taught. While we 
would not care to bring the teaching to the test of this or that particular 
experiment we are willing to say that if by experiment is meant the general 


KNOWLEDGE OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 181 


conduct of the life, we claim for Christian truth that it can be submitted to 
experiment as truly as can any other truth. In the satisfaction which 
follows the making of the truth taught by Jesus the rule of the life we have 
the inner conviction which assures of the truth of the teaching. 

But we meet still some further objection. The contender for the real 
and vital communion between the soul and God feels that somehow we have 
handed this entire matter of assurance over to the natural as distinguished 
from the supernatural. Instead of the direct witness of God’s spirit with 
ours we have now only the same kind of assurance which follows grasp 
upon any kind of truth. The trouble with our explanation is that it seems 
altogether too easy. 

To discuss this point with thoroughness would carry us over into 
metaphysics. We may say, however, that what has been set forth above 
is said with the conviction that in God we live and move and have our 
being ; that the powers which we call natural are just as truly His as those 
we call supernatural or miraculous; that He is in all the things of this 
universe except sin; that the worst kind of atheism is that which looks to 
find God only in the startling and unusual rather than in the orderly, every 
day processes which are so common; that the assurance which we have as 
to the truth, even if it seems like assurance as to any other kind of truth, is 
produced by the immediate contact of God, even though he be acting in a 
way which we call altogether natural. 

It is high time for the church to get rid of the deism which has haunted 
her for so long. The modern preaching of the doctrine of ‘Divine 
Immanence”’, crude as much of it is, is helping us to realize the presence 
of God in the world of external nature. It is time for the church to take 
the further step and insist more earnestly that God is not only in orderly 
physical movements, but in orderly psychological movement as well. 
Mental realm as well as material realm should be looked upon as the abode 
of His law. There is only one way that I can be convinced of the Truth, 
and this is by taking it as the guide of my life and seeing if the satisfaction 
of assurance follows. 

But another makes the objection that if God is the immediate inspiring 
agent back of all truth how are we to decide between truths of differing 
degrees of importance. We have been taught that the Truth as itis in 
Jesus is the supreme truth, but if all truth comes to us as the inspiration of 
God, is not all truth on a level? 

There is really very little need of disturbance at this point. The doing 
of the will of God is supposed to make the will of God the supreme consider- 
ation. If we wish to know whether the knowledge of the truth of Jesus is 
the supreme truth there is only one test. Put it in the supreme place and 
see if the soul finds supreme satisfaction. God indeed tells us all things 
that are really true. All good gifts come from Him. There is nothing in 
this thought, however, that should put all the gifts on a dead level of impor- 
tance. The belief is to be judged by the satisfaction which follows taking 
it as a rule of life. If we wish to get the true perspective on the importance 


182 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


of God’s gifts let the perspective be the perspective of Jesus. The appeal 
is always to life. 

But does this conception provide against error? Is it not possible for 
a man to be woefully mistaken? Can he not go on year after year thinking 
that he is doing God’s will and becoming all the more convinced that his 
error is the truth? This is of course possible, but it is possible on any 
system. The believer in a miraculous witness of the spirit is just as likely 
to be mistaken as the holder of the view here set forth. All that we can 
say is that we ought to have something of the confidence in a right outcome 
that possessed the Master. He was not unaware of the mistakes that men 
might make, and yet he seemed perfectly sure of his final triumph. There 
is a great deal of the merely abstract about this scruple. The difficulty is 
not great in real life. If a central African chorus should attempt to prove 
to us that their atrocious discords are superior to the music of Handel’s 
Messiah, we should concede the saving sincerity of the African’s belief, but 
should hold fast to our own thought nevertheless. We should even think 
ourselves warranted in holding fast, no matter how great the body of proof 
the heathen singers might bring forth. The satisfaction that comes from 
doing the will of God includes the belief that in the end the truth will 
prevail. 

But now our scientific friend of a few moments ago returns with the 
protest that all this is desperately unscientific. The foundations of the 
faith must be deeper laid than in the consciousness of satisfied assurance 
in the minds of the disciples. We have to respond to him as we did before, 
that there is just as much basis for the belief in Christian truth as there is 
for belief in scientific truth. Science must have assumptions which rest 
only on the satisfaction which they give the inner life. That splendid 
system of law, according to which all things are controlled to the very 
center is an assumption. If the physicist declares that he takes nothing 
into the laboratory with him, we make speedy response that he takes this 
far-reaching assumption with him. And he takes it simply because it satis- 
fies his inner needs. He will not be satisfied with thought of an arbitrary 
and irrational chaos of truant and fugitive facts. He will set aside experi- 
ment after experiment in the hope to vindicate this settled assumption. Or 
take the thought of the uniformity of nature. This assumption also stands 
largely because of the satisfaction it gives our mental needs. Underneath 
all laboratory research is the invisible, unproved basis which is really the 
guiding factor in the scientist’s work. If the scientist points to the body of 
actual result which follows his assumption, so can we point to the body of 
actual result which follows our taking the doing of the will of God to be our 
guide toward the truth. 

We conclude this part of the discussion as we began, by saying that 
Jesus rested His system upon the consciousness which would come to men’s 
minds as they acted upon the truth He proclaimed. The Gospels do not 
stand simply because they have been uttered by divine man. They stand 
because men longing to be divine have become convinced of their truth in 


KNOWLEDGE OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 183 


actual doing. If they ceased to satisfy when taken as the actual guide for 
men determined to do the will of God, nothing could keep them in the 
thought of the world. They would have value only to the antiquarian or to 
the historian. ‘If any man willeth to do the will of God he shall know 
of the doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak of Myself”. The 
revelation which comes in Jesus is the very top and crown of all of God’s 
manifestations of Himself. The final witness to the truth of that revelation 
is the feeling of satisfaction which it begets in submissive hearts. 

After having dwelt thus on the meaning of the text, perhaps a word as 
to some phases of the usableness of the principle here set forth may be in 
order. The principle provides first of all for a basis of suitable modesty of 
Christian claim as to knowledge. We are to be unflinchingly certain of the 
truths which come to us as convictions begotten by religious doing. Some 
things will be and should be gripped with increasing tenacity as life goes 
on, but some other things ought to be held lightly and contemplated from 
the standpoint of a genuine Christian agnosticism. Truths which come to 
us as the result of doing the will of God belong to the first class, while con- 
jectures which do not harden into conviction as the product and accom- 
paniment of the will’s faithful activity may well be put in a second and 
inferior class. 

For example, Jesus taught us of immortality. The man who goes 
forth to live as if immortality were actually reachable finds himself coming 
to ineradicable assurance as to his own essential deathlessness. There are, 
however, some items of the future life which we all guess at but which are 
not forced into conviction out of Christian doing. The details of the 
heavenly existence, the manner of ‘‘ body”’ the soul shall have, the precise 
character of the tasks that are to be ours, the final disposition of the 
wicked,—matters like these do not come within the reach of the illumina- 
tion of Christian doing. If there are, on the other hand, implications which 
follow by a sort of spiritual necessity from the underlying trust in immor- 
tality there is no reason why we should not hold them fast. If, for instance, 
earthly friendships are lifted to the exalted spiritual realm where they are 
eternally worth while, there is every ground for the trust that nothing in the 
final shock can touch them. But let us always remember that declarations 
as to hidden things which do not base themselves on convictions rising out 
of the doing of God’s will should be put forward merely as conjectures. 

Again, consider the bearing of the Master’s principle on some of the 
profoundest speculations in Christian philosophy. The underlying basis in 
this philosophy is a body of conviction produced in us by obedience to 
God. We believe in the God Whom Jesus revealed because the assumption 
of that God’s existence as a working belief in our lives convinces us that 
He is and that He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. 
Active acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Son of God leads to the completest 
acquiescence in Hisclaims. Moreover, we can gofurther. On the basis of 
our certainty as to the ethical life of God we can reach out into some legiti- 
mate speculations as to the inmost life of God. We put these speculations 


184 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


to the same test as the more primary beliefs and if we find satisfaction in 
them we hold them as true until we get something better. This is, of 
course, mere philosophical commonplace, but it would be well if we stated 
more often and more clearly just the ground on which many of our beliefs 
rest. We need no better basis than this,—that the belief is forced upon us 
by the doing of the will of God. 

For illustration, look at the doctrine of the Trinity. What is the secret of 
its persistence through the centuries in spite of all the intellectual scruples 
urged against it? Just this,—that we are forced to the belief in one form or 
another through the strength of our conviction as to the ethical character of 
God. We wish to make adequate provision for that ethical life, and as 
ethical life calls for worthy objects on which to expend itself, we say that 
the Father finds such objects in Son and Spirit. We even go further and 
give the Son and Spirit personal life that there may be the social requisites 
of highest ethical experience. The point upon which I now insist is that 
the effective demand’ comes from the necessity, which we feel as we do God’s 
will, for some real basis for ethical fulness in the source of all moral and 
spiritual doing. Of course we may profess to rest our belief on some other 
foundation stones, but their masonry will not bear close scrutiny. We may 
say that God must have an object equal to Himself in the very nature of the 
mind’s activity,—that an infinite subject is an absurdity without an infinite 
object. But if God were not a moral being, the mere psychological demand 
for an object could be satisfied without having the object worthy and without 
making it personal. God might be a supreme Egotist glorying in unsocial 
and loveless loneliness; or He might grovel in an endless succession of 
infinitely trivial, or infinitely silly, or infinitely wicked objects. No; the only 
basis for belief in the Trinity is the pressure for the doctrine as we do the 
commandments of God. Ifthe pressure of these needs should lessen, our 
hold on the doctrine of the Trinity would slacken. If the pressure should 
still further decrease we would surrender the thought of the moral nature of 
God, and complete removal of the pressure might do away with belief in 
God altogether. Instead of trying to find some other foundation we ought 
frankly to face our problem and insist upon the superior stability of a basis 
which rises out of the mighty upward push of ethical needs. All we ask of 
reason is that it shall help us express the implications which ethical con- 
victions carry with them; and thatit shall free us from thought which is self- 
contradictory. Instead of haggling with merely ‘intellectual’ reasoners 
over the technically logical standing of some belief in Christian philosophy, 
we should make all reasonable allowance for the frailty of human reasoning 
and then insist that these beliefs have something of the warrant of the 
Master’s utterance about doing the will and knowing the truth. 

There ought to be some value too in the thought of the text for our true 
attitude as reverent critics of the Biblical literature. We are living in an 
age when science takes all things seriously; and scientific methods are 
employed as never before in the test of the Scripture narrative. It would 
be hard to say too much in praise of the results which have come from these 
methods in the hands of many experts. But there is a danger lest the 


KNOWLEDGE OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 185 


methods become too entirely the methods of the merely professional investi- 
gator. The exclusive reliance on the strictly technical tends to the deadening 
of that spiritual sympathy which ought to be supreme in Biblical criticism. 
*“T never read anything about the Bible which is not critical” said a distin- 
guished theological professor recently. Some of this scholar’s unreliability 
is explained by the statement. Critical investigation ought to be accom- 
panied with that keenness of spiritual insight which is the deposit and 
outcome of doing the will of God. This ethical insight will mean more than 
months of technical scrutiny. If the merely textual critic of Shakespeare is 
to be distrusted, why should not the merely textual critic of the Scripture 
be distrusted? If a critic must steep his mind with the very spirit of 
Shakespeare before he really becomes able to speak with authority about 
the author and his work, why should not the same rule hold in the study of 
the Bible? If the one way to come into close understanding of the spirit of 
Jesus is by doing the will of God, why should not religious devotion be 
exalted as an indispensable equipment for the study of the word of God? 

Let us see if this principle can be made of any practical benefit. Take 
the narratives of the Virgin Birth, for example. The critics busy themselves 
with minute technical and professional scrutiny of the Gospel account. 
Many of them seem to think that their critical and scientific processes 
are the final reliance in the attainment of whatever truth is to be reached. 
But the man who, out of complete devotion to the will of God, has brought 
his thought to sympathy with the fineness of the Spirit which is back of and 
beneath the Book makes almost instantly this significant discovery,—that 
whereas it would have been deemed afrzorz improbable that the narrative 
could be told without shocking reverence, yet that very wonder has been 
accomplished. The story is there, and is there with an exquisite delicacy 
which is quite a considerable argument for its veracity. 

Or take another incident even more detailed. We have in John the 
story of the Master’s treatment of the woman taken in adultery. The critics 
tell us that the narrative did not originally have a place in John’s Gospel,— 
that it was put in at a date later than the date of the Gospel and by a hand 
other than that of the apostle. This we are entirely willing to concede. 
But when the critic goes further and insists that the narrative cannot 
be true, we demur. Weare perfectly willing to take any critical conclusions 
forced upon us by the facts, but we insist, first, that this question be con- 
sidered. How does it happen that the narrative appeals to those who have 
by righteous life come to closest understanding of the spirit of Jesus as per- 
fectly in harmony with what we should expect of His character? We cannot 
believe that any one could have beforehand predicted what Jesus would do 
in a situation like that of the story, but we feel that the narrative is true to 
Him. We would not exalt this principle unreasonably, but we nevertheless 
feel that in this case and in others like it the merely technical methods of 
the professionalist are not the final instruments. The insight that comes 
out of doing the will of God is no unimportant part of the furnishing of the 
competent Biblical student. Instead of telling men to prepare themselves 
with the latest technical knowledge so as to be able to meet destructive 


SV = 


186 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


criticism on its own ground, it would seem just at present to be in order to 
call also for the development of a spiritual insight to which the destructive 
critic does not attain. Better make the attack upon him from that higher 
ground to which he does not come. 

Not only has this principle philosophical and critical value, but it has 
also homiletical value. It is our aim as teachers and preachers to instruct 
men in the teaching of Jesus. How shall we do this? The important 
method is that of this passage,—the stirring of the depths of the ethical life 
to the doing of the will of God. I suppose that Jesus depended very little, 
after all, on His direct oral teaching for the development of the twelve for 
apostleship. He did not insist upon note book methods of instruction. He 
aimed to get the disciples to doing the will of God. In the midst of all our 
attempts to get the Gospel into some simple form so that men may see it at 
a glance, we should not let go of this fundamental principle of the Master’s 
pedagogics,—that the truth worth seeing can only be seen as we do the will 
of God,—that unless we rouse the wills of men to rightecusness we cannot 
get them to understand the Gospel. How this is to be done is a problem 
that taxes us to the utmost, but if we can do it we have the essential thing, 
not only for the salvation of the souls of the men with whom we work, but 
for the enlightenment of the church and the world as to the truth of the 
system which came with Jesus. 

If it will not unduly extend a paper already too long, let me say in 
closing that it seems to me that we have in this utterance of Jesus a glimpse 
at the truth in that most fascinating of all realms of study,—the inquiry as 
to the secret of the wisdom of Jesus and the unfolding of His mind. For 
those who think that Jesus brought all His knowledge with Him from the 
beginning,—that He surrendered nothing in becoming man, this question 
has of course no meaning. But those of us who believe that it really cost 
the Son of God something substantial to become man are not willing to 
admit that all wisdom was His fromchildhood. We can see that the personal 
thread of inalienable self-feeling must have been with the Master in all 
phases of His existence, but we cannot think that His self-knowledge and 
His penetration of the depths of the wisdom of God came without effort of 
will. We feel that we have the key to the secret in this passage. From the 
beginning the will of Jesus swung intuitively toward God. As He did the 
will of the Father that infinite wisdom which is of God descended as a matter 
of course. So far as concerns the essential body of His teaching He found 
the truth not by miraculous revelation, but by profound conviction resulting 
from perfect obedience to the willabove. Out of the perfect deed came the 
perfect knowledge. Jesus spoke out of His own experience when He said 
that doing the will of God would bring certainty as to the truth. 

The lesson brings not only enlightenment but encouragement. As we 
approximate to His devotion to the will of God we shall approximate to His 
understanding of the wisdom of God. The one thing that keeps back the 
descent of the perfect wisdom is imperfect, half-hearted doing. Ifwe could 


go about doing good as He did we could more speedily come near the 
wisdom which was His. 


*SPIRIT AND LIFE. 


(ST. JOHN 7: 37-39.) 
BY REV. AMORY H. BRADFORD, D. D., 


PASTOR OF THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, MONTCLAIR, N. J. 


The doctrine of the Spirit as stated in the seventh chapter of John’s 
Gospel, impresses one even at the first glance with its vastness and its 
mystery. What do these texts mean? “If any man thirst, let him come 
unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, 
out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake He of the 
Spirit, which they that believed on Him were to receive; for the Spirit was 
not yet gzven ; because Jesus was not yet glorified ”’. 

Here are two distinct utterances ; the former was spoken by Jesus, and 
the latter is an intrepretation of His words by the writer of the Fourth 
Gospel. The Master was speaking to seekers after the truth rather than to 
the disciples. He says in substance: If you are really athirst for God and 
for reality, come to Me, trust Me, believe on Me, and you shall be so full of the 
true life that it will flow out of you as waters from an overflowing fountain. 
In other words if you really desire truth and right, come into personal con- 
tact with Me and you will receive what you desire in abundance. 

If those who are athirst for truth and right will accept Jesus and follow 
Him, they will be enabled to live the life of the Spirit, to realize the power 
of the Spirit, and to help others to do so. Let us consider spirit as life in 
the history of mankind. Spirit is “ght because it is life. Spirit is uni- 
versal; consequently light is universal. Spirit according to the Christian 
usage of the word is everywhere that the Christian revelation has gone. 
The spiritual life is the spirit in man which is spelled with a small s, touched 
by the Spirit of God which is spelled with a capital S. Within all true 
Christians, therefore, is all the light they need for illumination and guidance. 
*“Ve have an unction from the Holy One and need not that any man should 
teach you”. This, as I understand it, is the doctrine of the Quakers. 
** When He, the spirit of truth will come, He will lead you into all truth and 
show you things to come”. What does this mean? ‘That some external 
divine light in some strangely mystical way falls upon us and illuminates 
our path? Does it not mean rather that within the souls of all men there 
is light, obscured, perhaps, but surely there, which is sufficient for all man’s 
duties ; that the candle in every soul is lighted by the sun which is God, and 
that it is our supreme duty and privilege to use the light which shines 


* Abstract of an address delivered at the Fourth Conference, held at Grace Episcopal Church, January 
13, 1904. 


187 


188 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


within, and which will never fail those who are pure in mind and loyal in 
heart. 

The chief spiritual difficulty of our time is that we are not willing to 
know ourselves. The oracle was right, ‘‘ Know thyself ”’, for thus, and thus 
only may you hope to know God. I am well aware that it may be said in 
reply: ‘Then all authoritative standards go,—then the guess of one man 
is worth as much as the guess of another”. But there is the mistake. I 
am not speaking of the guesses of any man, but I am insisting that the final 
truth is written within as surely, if not as clearly, as without; that it was 
within before it was without; that it was expedient for Jesus to go away 
in order that the eyes of His disciples might be turned inward rather than 
outward; and that we have no more sacred obligation than to study the 
truth in the inner light, and that no man who is loyal to himself can, at the 
same time, be false to God. 

Our next point is that Spirit which is life is the cause of progress and, 
may it not be said, the efficient force in evolution? What is evolution? It 
is the gradual development according to inherent laws, of a resident force. 
What is that force? I choose to call it Spirit. Indeed evolution seems to 
me to be the process by which the Spirit immanent in the universe responds 
to the Spirit who transcends the universe. 

Finally the spiritualization of all men and of all institutions is the goal 
of history. All menare spirits; but all do not live inthe realization of their 
spiritual origin and destiny. A spiritual being has been evolved, but 
often turns back to fleshly conditions from which he has risen and does not 
know himself to be a spirit. That is sin. 

Individuals are spiritualized when they realize that they are spirits 
come from God, and live according to their higher rather than their lower 
natures. And this is the lesson of lessons—actually to appreciate that we 
are spirits, and that, as naturally as flowers turn toward the sun, when we 
are our true selves we turn toward God the Father of spirits, and are dis- 
satisfied with everything at enmity with Him. When men shall dwell in the 
consciousness that they are partakers of God’s very nature, and therefore 
spirits, for He is Spirit, and are in harmonious relations with one another, 
as God-like spirits must be, then the race will be spiritualized, and the 
triumph of the Kingdom of God will be near. 

The Spirit of God identifying Himself with the spirit in man is ‘“‘ The 
inner light ”’,—the candle of the Lord,—the revealer of truth and duty. 

He is the inspiration toward holy conduct, the power which makes 
truth to become life. 

He is the cause of progress in individuals and among the institutions of 
men ; and the spiritualization of the whole race of man, until the vilest and 
meanest shall think the thoughts and do the deeds and share the glory of 
Christ, is the goal of history, 


“ The one far-off event 
Toward which the whole creation moves ”’. 


* THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS. 
(St. JoHN 8:29, 46.) 
SS SEY WEE aA Fee ELON EINGION, 1D: D:, 


RECTOR OF GRACE EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NEW YorRK. 


Invited to address this Conference upon the subject of the sinlessness 
of Jesus as evidenced by the contents of certain specified chapters of the 
Fourth Gospel, I felt, for the moment, that I had been shut up between too 
narrow limits. Why not listen to St. Peter and St. Paul, I asked myself, as 
well as to St. John? Or if, for sufficient reason, one must needs be confined 
to a solitary New Testament author, why not be given access to all of that 
author’s writings, rather than be tied down to a fractional portion of a single 
one of them? Had not St. John dealt with this topic in his LETTERS as well 
as in his Gospel? 

Enquiry and meditation, however, soon convinced me that the range 
given was amply wide, and that a single chapter out of the designated four 
furnished enough, and more than enough material to supply all my need. 
I even found it possible to narrow down the sources of information still 
further, and confess myself, to-day, quite content to stake the whole issue 
upon two detached sayings, one of them a question and the other an affirma- 
tion,—both of them together not covering more than twenty words. 

The secret of this abatement in my demand upon Holy Scripture lies 
here. I am convinced that certitude as to the sinlessness of Jesus is really 
conditioned upon an act of faith. We declare Him sinless not because we 
have critically reviewed His life and found no flaw, but because we have 
yielded assent to what He says about Himself. In other words, ‘Christ 
alone without sin” is a dogma, not a generalization, Absolutely to prove 
the point from facts observed is impossible. We get at it by believing in 
words spoken, by crediting, for sufficient cause, a solemn asseveration. I 
learned this from James Mozley, one of the keenest as well as weightiest of 
the nineteenth-century theologians. 

In the course of a controversy waged with Professor Tyndall, late in the 
sixties, over the subject of miracles, Mozley found occasion to show, and 
did show most convincingly, the utter impossibility of proving in any case 
inward sanctity from outward actions. He instances our Lord’s denuncia- 
tions of the Scribes and Pharisees, and then remarks: ‘To those who 
admit, upon the evidence which is laid before them, our Lord’s sinlessness, 
there is not the slightest discord between such language and such sinless- 
ness, but common reason tells us that had we to judge of such language 
without the assumption of our Lord’s sinless character, we could not tell 
but that some element of imperfection, some shade of prejudice, some pas- 


*Delivered at the Fourth Conference, held at Grace Episcopal Church, January 13, 1904. 


189 


190 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


sionate excess, might enter into such censures. The majesty, the integrity, 
the holiness of our Lord’s character is indeed conspicuous and obvious upon 
the facts of the case, but when we attribute absolute sinlessness to Him, it 
is plain that by the laws of reason we must be going upon some further 
evidence than that which is contained in His outward life and deportment”’. 

The method to which Mozley in these words points us is so unlike that 
commonly adopted by Christian apologists, that we shall do well to make 
sure of understanding it. The more usual course with defenders of the 
faith is, as we know, to marshal the facts and incidents which in the four 
Gospels connect themselves, more or less closely, with the person of Christ, 
and then to urge the conclusion that a life so luminous in its entirety must 
necessarily have been in its details wholly without spot. But to one who 
realizes the universality of sin, to one who discerns in sin a characteristic of 
the human lot which none escapes or can escape, such reasoning is scarcely 
satisfactory. It may and does suffice to prove the Son of Mary holier than 
any other born of woman, but to be sinless, in the fullest and deepest sense 
the word can bear, means to be what no man ever has been, unless we rec- 
ognize this one solitary exception. In a word, if Jesus was really sinless, 
His sinlessness must count as the miracle of history, more marvelous than 
any other recorded marvel, a wonder beyond all other wonders, signal and 
unique. Surely if there be any phenomenon that transcends experience 
and defies parallel it is sinlessness, and since under the most favorable of 
circumstances it is confessedly difficult to authenticate a miracle, doubly 
difficult ought it to be reckoned to establish in any given instance absolute 
immunity from blame. A character may be so white and pure as literally to 
dazzle us by the brilliancy of its perfection, (there have been such,) and yet 
be far from sinless. Though the unaided eye discerns them not, there are 
spots on the sun. 


“The very source and fount of day 
Is flecked with wandering isles of night”. 


Who, then, is this Light of the World, this Sun of Righteousness, that 
of Him any should dare to say, He alone among the hundreds of thousands 
of millions who have come into this world cut of the unseen was sinless? 
The facts of His life do, indeed, prove Him to have been the holiest of men, 
but there is a difference between being the holiest of men and being holy as 
God is holy. 

We are in a temper now to look at the two sayings out of St. John’s 
Gospel, one of them an affirmation, one a question, upon which I declared 
myself willing to rest the whole case. They are these: ‘‘I do always those 
things which please Him”. ‘ Which of you convicteth me of sin?” | 

These words unquestionably place Jesus of Nazareth in a class by Him- 
self. It is not known that any other human being ever used the like. The 
two utterances differ in form; the one is a positive assertion, the other is a 
challenge, but in purport they are identical. Always to do those things 
which please God is, ex vi termini, to be sinless, for on this same Evangelist’s 
authority ‘‘he that doeth righteousness is righteous”’. 


THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS. I9I 


The question is, can we, and do we, trust Jesus Christ, when He thus 
speaks? If we can and do, the entire question in controversy is for us set- 
tled ; the miracle of history is acknowledged, the unique exception recognized. 
No longer do we find it necessary laboriously to examine and critically to 
weigh the arguments for and against this point of sinlessness. We say, as 
the Samaritans said to the woman who had brought them out from their city 
to the place where Jesus was: ‘‘ Now we believe, not because of thy saying, 
for we have heard Him ourselves and know that this is indeed the Christ”’. 

Depend upon it, friends, this whole matter of religion, as Christians 
have to do with it, is an affair of personal confidence, to be settled like any 
other affair of personal confidence—can I trust him or can I not? ‘The 
man believed the word which Jesus had spoken unto him, and went his 
way”. That tells the whole story. 

Clear-cut against the back-ground of the past stands Jesus Christ. We 
talk about forgetting Him, ignoring Him, relegating Him to obscurity, vot- 
ing Him obsolete. It cannot be done. There He stands. His eyes, like 
the eyes of a portrait on the wall, follow us whithersoever, in this narrow 
room called human life, we turn. Thrust aside even ever so violently He 
cannot be, waved aside even ever so courteously He willnot be. He is here 
to stay. Reckon with Him we must. 

Well then, on the whole, shall we trust Him? I say “‘on the whole”, 
wishing by that phrase to intimate that I have no disposition to minimize 
the difficulties of faith. But after making all the allowance that you please 
or that the facts in the case demand for draw-backs and set-backs, after dis- 
counting the clatter of the critics, the cold neutrality of the literary guild, 
the strivings of the many that oppose themselves by whatsoever name known 
or called,—on the whole, all things considered, Christendom being what it 
is, these nineteen hundred years having been what they have been, can we 
do better, you and I, than take Jesus at His word? If we do, the sinless- 
ness is part of it all. Which of us convicteth Him of sin? Not one, and 
why? For the simple reason that He is innocent. 

“T do always” He says, ‘‘those things that please Him”. “Assertion, 
pure assertion !”’—yes, I grant it,—but then we have just agreed that, on the 
whole, we see our way to giving the asserter. apr confidence. That settles 
the matter. Even as those who first trusted in Christ, in Christ we trust. 

I propose now to set opposite this statement, “I do always such things 
as please Him”, three other New Testament affirmations, which, upon their 
face, appear to contravene it. If we find after analysis and investigation 
that these sayings, so far from being contradictory to, are really confirmatory 
of the sinlessness of Jesus, we shall be in a position to: declare that the men 
upon whose teaching Christendom is tounded, are, with respect to this all- 
important point, of one mind. 

“Why callest thou me good? There isnone good but one, that isGod”. 
Jesus Christ said this. Had He known Himself to be sinless would He 
have so spoken? Not unless He was conscious of being out of the category 
which held the one whom He addressed, not unless He was intending to 


192 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


bring out into clear light His own essential divinity. There is none good 
but God, if I am good, I must be God, and conversely, Aut Deus, aut non 
bonus. 

Recall the dialogue and note a point in it too commonly missed. The 
questioner is the young man who has great possessions, but who would fain 
add to them, if he may, the further treasure of eternal life. Christ says to 
him, “If thou wilt enter into life keep the commandments”. The young 
man asks ‘‘Which?”’ Now we should naturally expect, should we not, that 
in answer to this question Jesus would begin with the first commandment 
and go on consecutively to the tenth. He does nothing of the sort. He 
skips the entire first table, He omits the whole of the duty towards God, 
begins,—‘“ Thou shalt do no murder”’, and confines Himself wholly to those 
of the ten words which cover our duty towards our fellow man,—a strange 
hiatus. But note what follows. ‘All these’, the young man declares, 
“Have I kept from my youth up, what lack I yet?” The obvious, nay, the 
absolutely necessary answer would seem to be, ‘‘What thou lackest is com- 
pliance with that portion of the law which thus far I have not named, the 
duty towards God”’. Such, I say, would seem to be the one reply which the 
situation demands. 

But that is not what we find. What we find is this,—‘‘If thou wilt be 
perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have 
treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me”. Come, follow Me. Who is this, 
we ask, amazed, who dares to make the following of him, the one thing 
lacking for a man who has only so far professed compliance with the second 
table of the law? Who can it be save the One Whom to trust and Whom to 
serve, is the same thing as to do our duty towards God? The hiatus is filled, 
the gap covered, the whole law kept. 

The second affirmation to which I made reference, as seemingly incon- 
sistent with the sinlessness of Jesus, is this. ‘‘ Though He were a Son, yet 
learned He obedience by the things which He suffered, and being made 
perfect He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey 
Him’. You recognize the, passage as quoted from the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. Let us look at it. Disobedience to lawful authority is surely not 
compatible with sinlessness. And yet, this writer seems to speak as if there 
was once a time when it could be truly said of the Lord Jesus that He did 
not know how to obey, in fact had to begin learning how? But pray whither 
should we go in search of evidence that such a time there was? We have, 
it is true, no authentic Gospel of the infancy, but we have a Gospel of the 
childhood, and what do we there read? Why, simply this —and it tells the 
whole story,—‘‘He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was 
subject unto them”. And what of His later years? In all that the Evan- 
gelists have to tell of that marvelous life, is there tobe found the slightest 
hint of a refusal to obey any rightful authority human or divine? Is not 
their whole narrative from first to last confirmatory of the,—‘‘I do always 
those things that please Him ’”’? 

Clearly, unless we are to reckon Christ “‘among the transgressors” in 


THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS. 193 


a sense quite contrary to that in which His followers have all along been 
interpreting the prophet’s phrase, there must be some way of understanding 
what it means to ‘“‘ learn obedience”’ other than that which makes it identical 
with learning how to obey. A disobedient Christ could have no standing 
room in the church’s creed. It is the One Who says “I come to do Thy 
will” Whom we confess, the keeper alike of God’s least commandments and 
of His greatest, the sinless One. But how shall we interpret learning obedi- 
ence in such a way as to make Christ’s having done so not inconsistent with 
such a faith? In this way, I submit, by taking it to mean one’s becoming 
acquainted with the whole territory covered and included by obedience. 
The man who has learned painting is other and more than the man who has 
merely learned to paint. —The man who has learned music is other and more 
than the man who has simply learned how to play upon an instrument. The 
man who has learned painting has explored the entire subject from first to 
last; he knows it historically, he knows it critically, he knows it practically, 
he can tell you who the great painters have been, what were the character- 
istics of their various styles, and all about it; he has covered the whole 
ground. So with learning obedience, we may understand the phrase in the 
narrow and limited sense of simply learning to do as one is bid, or we may 
understand it in this larger and broader sense of learning how mucha really 
genuine obedience involves, learning, so to say, the whole cubic contents of 
obedience, as obedience stands related to human life. This last is the way 
in which Christ learned obedience, He grew to be master of the whole 
subject and the method whereby this mastership was acquired was the 
method of suffering. It is written of the child Christ that He “‘increased ” 
in wisdom as well as in stature, and part of this increase we may well believe 
was in that particular kind of wisdom by which men come to know how much 
a really complete obedience covers and involves. The only difference 
between the Christ-child and other Nazareth children in this respect was 
that He never disobeyed. Whatever least thing was taught by suffering 
was straightway put in practice. With the ordinary child it isnotso. In 
the school of suffering the lesson has to be taught many times, it has to be 
line upon line and precept upon precept before the pupil can be depended 
upon to act up to it. Disobedience is an act of the will. There is no such 
thing as disobeying without a conscious determination to do so. 

Christ had only to know what obedience required of Him, and at once 
He did it. But in this sort of wisdom, the learning what obedience did 
require, He, from day to day, from year to year, “increased” until, at last 
made perfect in it, He could say that it was learned, even though in the 
whole process of learning there had been no single instance of transgression ; 
and only when there is transgression is there sin. 

The third saying which I quote as being seemingly in conflict with the 
dogma, Christ alone without sin, is also from the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
In that Scripture we find Christ spoken of as “‘ One that hath been in all points 
tempted like as we are, yet without sin”. How can He, we ask, have been 
without sin if tempted in all points like as we are. In us there is an 


194 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


element of consent, which goes out to meet the temptation half-way so to 
speak. We cannot say of ourselves as Christ said of Himself that Satan 
cometh and finds nothing in us. He finds too much. But let us see 
whether we cannot establish a parallelism between Christ’s temptation and 
ours, which while it shows us sinful at the same time leaves Him sinless. 

It is common to explain the three temptations in the wilderness by 
saying that the first of them, ‘‘Command that these stones be made bread”’, 
was addressed to the animal element that is in every man; that the second, 
““Cast Thyself down’’, was an appeal to spiritual pride, and that the third, 
‘All these things will I give Thee, if—”, was an attempt to work upon ambi- 
tion in the common, worldly sense. But I think it will be more to our present 
purpose if we insist on looking at all three of the temptations as intended 
to undermine the Son’s confidence in the Father. You recall the wording 
of the tempter’s appeal, 7f Thou be the Son of God,—do this; 7 Thou be 
the Son of God,—do that. 

We must keep it in mind that this crisis in our Lord’s life followed close 
upon the baptism. Jesus had just been inducted, as we may say, into His 
office as the Christ. The voice had said from heaven, ‘‘ This is My beloved 
Son’’, and John the baptizer had solemnly borne witness to the coming of 
the greater than himself. 

Full of this consciousness of a heavenly mission, awakened perhaps for 
the first time to a clear understanding of all that He really was, the Son of 
Mary had come into the wilderness to ponder these things, to feed upon 
them, as it were, while denying Himself all other food. This, then, was the 
grand point of attack, the confidence in the heavenly Fatherhood. If the 
tempter could only shake this trust of Sonship, only break up this filial sense, 
his bad end would be accomplished. 

“Tf Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread”’. 

“Tf Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down from this pinnacle”. 

These are challenges,—challenges coupled witha sneer. The suggestion 
is that the powers of God’s world, the forces of His universe, are hostile, 
not friendly, and that because of their being so the divine Fatherhood can- 
not be trusted or depended upon. Is there nothing in the experience of 
modern man that tallies with all this? Have not you and I, in our measure 
and degree, to grapple with these same temptations? 

Who, we cry, can be counted upon to turn the stones that strew so 
thickly the wilderness of this life of ours into bread that shall satisfy our 
hunger? Who, in the midst of the many and great perils that compass all 
our ways, will keep us from being dashed to pieces if we fall? Not God, 
surely, for God works through nature, and nature is under the hard rule of 
law, and there is nothing for us save simple acquiescence in what seems to 
be our doom. There is nothing very unfamiliar about this,—is there? 
This is no strange temptation that thus befalls us, but such a one as is com- 
mon to modern man,—the temptation to distrust God’s love, the temptation 
to disbelieve in His care, to repudiate the Sonship. But, after all, the only 
thing we need to help us out of our distress is patience. In wonderful ways, 


THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS. 195 


and with a rapidity never before observed, the Author of Nature is making 
nature plastic to our hands. She is no longer the cruel mistress she used 
tobe. When she presses us hard with her pains and bruises, her accidents 
and sicknesses, and we feel moved almost to despair at the thought of all 
her waves and billows going over us, let us say to ourselves: ‘“‘ This is my 
temptation; God is my Father all the same. For reasons of His own He 
is letting these forces buffet me, letting me be tossed about, battered and 
tortured, but He is all the while just as truly my Father, just as really my 
friend, as if He were turning stones into bread at my appeal,or giving angels 
charge to bear me miraculously in their hands lest I strike my foot against 
gargoyle or capital. Be sure whatever voice bids us think otherwise is a 
tempting voice, a scoffing voice, a voice against which we shall do well to 
shut our ears. 

The last of the temptations stands alone and by itself. The devil taketh 
Him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth Him all the king- 
doms of the world ina moment of time. These, he says, are mine and to 
whomsoever I will I give them, and Thou shalt have them, if Thou wilt only 
fall down and worship me. But even in this case, different as the subject- 
matter of the temptation is from that of the other two, even here we discern 
the same bad motive lurking in the back-ground, the same malicious resolve 
to break down, if it can possibly be done, the soul’s confidence in the Father- 
hood of God. Itis Satan masquerading as the King. ‘Consider all this 
grandeur,” the tempter says, “see all this magnificent paraphernalia of war 
and peace, of enterprise and achievement. Look yonder at those parlia- 
ments and congresses, those armies and navies. Contemplate those huge 
industries symbolized by factory and workshop and warehouse. Watch the 
emigrations that are going on, the commingling of races, the peopling of 
continents, and think of what it means to have the ordering of all this. 
Think of the honor and the advantage of being my prime minister in the 
government of so various and interesting a realm”’. 

But this temptation like the others rests on the rotten substructure of a 
lie. This that the tempter says, is false, utterly, absolutely, everlastingly 
false. It is the power of goodness, not the power of evil, that really rules 
these manifold affairs of men. God, not Satan, is the sovereign commander 
of all the world. The vain pomp and glory of the world may be in Satan’s 
gift, but the true and solid glory of the world is God’s affair, not his. The 
great activities of human life are under the guidance of Him Whose never- 
failing providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth. This vast 
administration which covers and comprehends both State and Church, is 
carried on in the interests of righteousness, and any voice which whispers 
in our ear that to succeed we must sell ourself to Satan, is cajoling us to our 
ruin. The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof. Let us not imagine 
that any save this supreme proprietor can ever give us a clear title,to the 
permanent possession of any single square foot of it. It is the meek-spirited 
and they only who can expect to hold in perpetuity, these shall inherit the 
earth. 


196 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Thus was Christ tempted in all points like as we are. Hestoodit. We, 
with varying degrees of failure, we succumb. 

I have tried to show that His confident assertion, ‘I do always those 
things which please Him”’, finds nothing in the New Testament to contradict 
it, and that the right answer to His question ‘‘ Which of you convicteth Me 
of sin?” is this, ‘‘ No man, Lord”. 


* THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 
BY REV. CHARLES W. RISHELL, PH. D., 


Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Boston University School of Theology, 


Boston, Mass. 


The topic assigned me assumes that miracles, presumably the miracles 
of Jesus especially as reported in the Fourth Gospel, have an evidential 
value. 

To one who stops to consider the assaults that have been made upon 
the miraculous element in early Christian history, in the name of phi- 
losophy, science, history, and even of ethics, and the consequent elaborate 
defence of miracles rendered necessary by those assaults, the question can 
but suggest itself whether the recorded miracles are not rather a burden 
than a support to faith. 

Not a few have so thought, and have demanded that in the interests of 
Christian propagandism, at least in these days, we shall confess that the 
miracle stories of the Gospels are entirely incredible. I cannot agree with 
those who so think, and I do not believe that any one who has thoroughly 
mastered the principles of a sound philosophy, or who recognizes the 
limitations of science, or who comprehends the fundamentals of historical 
criticism, can doubt the reality of the miraculous element in the life of 
Jesus. The denial of the miraculous is based on a philosophy now falling 
rapidly into discredit, and upon a conception of science and history which 
must fall when that philosophy falls, as fall it must, and that soon, for it is 
now tottering. The flood of materialism in philosophy, science and history 
has been outridden by the modern ark with its considerable family of those 
who through all the storm held serenely fast to the truth. 

Still to those who are influenced by that wholly absurd philosophy, 
whether they be found in high places or in lowly, miracles must of necessity 
appear impossible. Some of these people are to be pitied—perhaps all of 
them. But some of them are to be condemned as pretenders, particularly 
those who profess to be philosophers; for they have never once looked at 
the real problems of philosophy with open eyes. 

But while some are to be pitied, and some are to be condemned, all 
need laboring with ; and it is a great temptation to enter here rather upon 
an argument in support of miracles than upon an argument which makes 
miracles a support to faith. I desist simply and solely because I wish to 
adhere to my topic, and because I presume that Dr. Strong did, a few 
weeks ago, all that needs doing in this line, in a single course of lectures. 

Nevertheless, even after philosophy, science and history have been 
permitted to give their testimony, and have been cross-examined, and after 


* Delivered at the Fourth Conference, held at Grace Episcopal Church, January 13, 1904. 


197 


198 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


it has been found that they have nothing to say against belief in miracles, 
but that at least two of these three witnesses, philosophy and history, offer 
practically compulsory evidence in favor of miracles, the question still arises, 
what is their evidential value? Not only what was it to those who saw the 
miracles performed, but what is it to us? 

This question divides into two parts: First, as to the manner in which 
the miracles buttress faith. The answer to this is found in the relation of 
the miracles of Christ to the claims of Christ. Those claims would have 
been mere idle boasts had He not wrought miracles. Any one can make 
claims; not every man’s deeds match his claims. When profession and 
deed do not correspond we rightly doubt the validity of the claim. 

There were at least two claims made by Christ that demanded miracle 
for their support. The first is His claim of authority—authority to forgive 
sin; to control the kingdom of God on earth; to determine the destinies of 
men. A claim to authority in these realms can be supported only by the 
exhibition of the divine power requisite to the execution of such a divine 
mission. 

There is not a little danger of confusion at this point. Not infrequently 
we hear it said that the regular course of nature is a better evidence of 
the divine operation in the world than any irregularity or miraculous opera- 
tions could be. And this is true. Some, however, fail to see that this does 
not touch the question as to the attestation of Christ’s mission. We do not 
need miracles to show us that there is a God or that He is at work in the 
world. What we need miracles for is to show us that Christ’s relation to the 
Father is what He said it was. And particularly did the people of His time 
need miracles for that purpose. His ministry was brief. Time was not 
allowed for the development of all those beneficent results which the reign 
of Christ in the hearts of men has produced and which are our best evidence 
of His right to reign. What was to be done for His generation had to be 
done quickly. Hence miracles were a necessity at the first, though for 
purposes of attesting Christ and His apostles they became less necessary as 
time went on. 

In view of all these considerations it is plain that the Jews were not 
altogether in the wrong in asking for a sign. Jesus refused to give this sign 
for several reasons; but the legitimacy of the demand He did not apparently 
deny. It was unfortunately a wicked and adulterous generation that required 
the sign. The demand sprang from hostility, not from a spirit of honest 
inquiry. 

Now suppose that with such extraordinary claims and such need of 
attestation there had been no extraordinary deeds illustrative of His divine 
power, what would have become of His claims? The people of His day 
simply could not have acknowledged them. The discrepancy between word 
and deed would have been too great. 

Especially true is this of the second claim referred to,—His claim of 
being the highest conceivable manifestation of divine love. He who claims 
practically infinite power and love must not fail to exhibit them in combi- 


THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 199 


nation if his claims are to be believed. His claims to be incarnate 
omnipotence must be substantiated by omnipotent works wrought during 
the incarnate state. The claim to be the incarnation of omnipotent love 
must be substantiated by omnipotent works of a benevolent type. The 
being who claims the power to do good and who does not do good is rightly 
held to be either an impostor or unfeeling. In view of His claims Christ 
without His miracles would be wholly anomalous. The profession of love 
and power matched by the exercise of power in the interest of love is a 
consistent picture. 

The second phase of the question concerning the evidential value of 
miracles pertains to the degree or amount of that value. This again divides 
into two parts: First, do the miracles compel assent? and second, are they 
sufficient as evidence? 

The first of these questions does not admit either of a categorical 
affirmative or negative. Very certain is it that those miracle stories do not 
directly compel our assent to Christ’s claims. Without them we could not 
believe ; but for many they are merely the condition of belief, not its 
ground. They are necessary to a consistent picture, and a consistent 
picture tells for credibility. But the question still remains unanswered 
whether the picture is imaginary or real, and the answer to that question is 
to be sought in the whole realm of Christian evidences. It may be said, 
however, that one who unhesitatingly accepts the fact of Christ’s miracles 
must accept Christ’s claims; and there are unnumbered multitudes who do 
accept both His miracles and His claims. Those with whom the miracles 
are themselves a problem cannot, of course, use them as a strong support 
of faith. With them the correctness of the consistent picture is still in 
doubt. 

This leads to the second point, namely, whether the miracles are 
sufficient evidence. It is plain that they are not. Nor are they the best 
evidence. One might accept the miracles and so the claims of Christ 
without becoming a practical Christian. Only that evidence which results 
in practical Christian living is adequate. Miracles have their place, but 
they cannot do everything. We must have them, but they are by no means 
our sole reliance. 

So much then for the general question of the evidential value of 
miracles. It is time to come to the special question as to the evidential 
value of miracles as seen in the Fourth Gospel. 

It is a generally recognized fact that this Gospel was written with Be 
object of producing belief in Christ on the part of those who had never 
seen Him and it is worth noting that it was the whole Gospel, not the 
miracles alone, that was to produce faith. ‘These things were written” 
says John, that is, all these things, ‘“‘that ye might believe’. Furthermore 
we find that Jesus appealed to His whole ministry in proof of His mission, 
and not to His miracles alone or chiefly. 

I think that at this point there is considerable misunderstanding. Jesus 
says (10:37, 38):—‘‘If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not 





200 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


But if I do them, though ye believe not Me, believe the works: that ye may 
know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father”. And 
again (14:11) :—‘‘ Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in 
Me: or else believe Me for the very works’ sake”’. 

These passages, with others, have, I think, been generally understood 
as Christ’s appeal to the convincing power of His miracles. Most readers, 
when they read these passages, mentally substitute miracles for works, 
as though He had said believe Me for the sake, or on account of the 
miracles. 

I cannot help feeling that this is an erroneous interpretation. Doubtless 
His works include His miracles, but His miracles are by no means the 
whole of His works. The word translated “work” is ergo, plural erga. 
The word translated “ miracle” is semeion, plural semeia. Jesus is never 
represented as appealing to His semeza, but always to His erga. Had He 
meant to appeal to His miracles only as attesting His nature and mission, 
He would have used the other word. Besides, His references to His works 
in other connections show that they were not miracles alone. In chapter 
5:36, He says: ‘‘The works which the Father hath given Me to accom- 
plish, the very works that I do, bear witness of Me”. And in 10:32, 
‘* Many good works have I showed you from the Father; for which of those 
works do ye stone Me?” The Jews answered Him: ‘“ Fora good work 
we stone Thee not, but for blasphemy’. And in 10:37, ‘If I do not the 
works of My Father, believe Me not”. Alsog:4, “I must work the works 
of Him that sent Me, while it is day”. 

The works of the Father—the works that the Father gave Him to 
accomplish! Were these works miracles only? Did the Father send His 
Son into the world for the sole purpose of working miracles? Great as they 
were, and great as was their significance, it is impossible that the miracles 
of Jesus exhausted His mission, and that everything He did and said over 
and above this was no part of the Father’s purpose in Him. It is unbelieve- 
able that all those good works in the ordinary human sense of faithfulness 
to duty, loyalty to principle, courage in the execution of one’s tasks in the 
midst of threatening danger, renunciation of the material in the interest of 
the spiritual, manifestation of sympathy, love, and human interest in human 
interests—I say it is unbelievable that these were no part of the works of the 
Father given to Jesus to accomplish. If the miraculous works are necessary 
as a credential, equally so are these ordinary, every-day good works neces- 
sary. And if we may judge from the record, it was just these plain and 
homely good works that engaged the greater partof His time. The miracles 
were the exceptional aspect of His activity. It is doubtless true that when 
He spoke of His works He included His miracles; but He certainly did not 
confine His thought to them. 

It is in strict accordance with this view of the case that men are repre- 
sented as believing in Jesus because of His words. Sucha case we have in 
the Samaritan mentioned in 4:41; also in the officers who were sent to 
arrest Christ, but who returned and said: ‘Never man spake like this 


THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 201 


man’ (7:46); and of many Jews of whom it is said that while “‘ He spake- 
these words many believed on Him” (7:30). In line with this also is the 

fact that His miracles did not always either produce or sustain faith in Him. 

In 12:37 we read “‘ That though He had done so many semeia before them, 

yet they believed not on Him ”’; and again in chapter 6, it is said that after 

certain words of Christ, many of His disciples went back and walked no 

more with Him. This, of course, was in spite of His miracles. 

On the other hand many did, apparently believe because of His miracles. 
We have accounts of such in 2:23; and in 3:2, when Nicodemus is repre- 
sented as recognizing the divine mission of Jesus through His miracles. 
The woman of Samaria also believed Him to be the Messiah because of His 
miraculous knowledge of her life. Furthermore, Jesus apparently felt that 
His miracles ought to be taken into account inthe determination of men’s 
relation to Him. ‘Though ye believe not Me, believe the works” (10: 38). 
“Tf I had not done among them the works which none other did, they had 
not had sin” (15:24). These passages do not refer to His miracles alone, 
but they do, nevertheless, refer to the miracles. He had lived His life among 
them on high levels. Deed miraculous and deed non-miraculous had matched 
word in Him. His claims had been high, but His works had been high also. 
There was no excuse for unbelief. So He thought and so wethink. That 
though they had seen Him perform so many miracles and so many other 
good works, all correspondent to His demands upon men, and yet that they 
should not yield to His demands, was reprehensible indeed. 

And yet Christ did not work His miracles for the purpose of producing 
belief in Him. Iam aware that the assertion I have just made is contrary 
to the received opinion, according to which He felt that in order to sustain 
His high claims He must attest Himself by miracles which He wrought as 
a credential of His authority. 

I can, perhaps, express my own understanding of this matter in this 
way: Jesus knew full well that His miracles would tend to produce faith in 
Him, and He felt that it was right that they should contribute to this result; 
and yet those facts had no influence whatever in prompting Him to work 
His miracles, all of which would have been wrought if they had been of no 
evidential value in the sense of producing or sustaining faith in Him. I am 
thoroughly convinced that this is so for all the miracles mentioned in the 
Fourth Gospel, though I admit that one or two passages seem on the surface 
to suggest a few exceptions. 

In order that the facts may be all brought before you I take up first 
those which militate against my contention, and then those which seem to 
me to support it. 

The first argument which might be used in favor of the ordinary view is 
that the word so frequently translated miracle should be translated sign. 
When Jesus turned the water into wine it is said, ‘‘ This beginning of signs 
did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth His glory” (2:11). Nico- 
demus said: ‘No man can do these signs that Thou doest except God be 
with him” (3:2). Jesussaid tocertainpersons: ‘‘ Ye seek Me, not because 


202 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


‘ye saw the signs, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled ” (6: 26). 
Many of the people said: ‘‘When Christ cometh, will He do more signs 
than these which this man hath done?” (7:31.) And so whenever in our 
King James translation of John, we read “ miracles”, we should literally 
translate ‘“‘signs’’. In other words these miraculous works are unquestion- 
ably looked upon as signs—signs of the divine power and mission of Jesus. 
Does not that seem,to show that Jesus wrought these works in order to 
prove His claims? The answer to this must be an emphatic “‘No”. It is 
one thing to say that they are signs and it is quite another to say that they 
were wrought for the purpose of being signs. I think, therefore, that this 
consideration has no weight. 

There are two miracles recorded in the Fourth Gospel which are referred 
to by Christ in language which seems to indicate that they were wrought for 
the purpose of producing faith. The first one is the case of the man who 
was born blind. When His disciples asked ‘‘ Who sinned, this man or his 
parents, that he was born blind”’, Jesus answered, ‘“‘ Neither did this man 
sin, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in 
him” (9:2, 3). If we applied the ordinary view to this it would have to be 
understood as saying that the blindness was not caused by the sin either of 
the man or his parents, but was brought upon him in order that an opportu- 
nity should be presented for making manifest the works of God. But the 
implications of such an interpretation are obnoxious in the highest degree. 
We cannot, in this day, bring ourselves to believe that God would visit 
blindness for a long term of years upon any one in order to show that He 
had the power and love requisite to restore him to sight. 

I pass this case for the present to take up the other similar one. When 
Jesus was informed that Lazarus was sick, He said: ‘‘ This sickness is not 
unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified 
thereby ”’ (11:4). Here again we seem to be told that a loved friend of 
Jesus was made sick and a whole family of Jesus’ dearest friends plunged 
into heartbreaking sorrow in order to give the Father an opportunity to 
glorify both Himself and His Son. So it appears to say, but really it does 
not seem to describe the action of God as you and I think of God in the 
light of the teachings of Christ. Was God so hard put to it that He had to 
create cases of blindness and sickness and death in order to show what His 
Son could do? Without any disposition to employ ridicule, I must say that 
one would have to think of Palestine as a remarkably healthy country if it 
did not furnish blind and sick in plenty upon whom Christ could exercise 
His miraculous power, without the necessity of blinding and sickening men 
in order to furnish opportunity for Him to prove His love and power. 

There must be some other way of interpreting these passages more 
consonant with the love and wisdom of God. And hints of that other way 
we have in other passages. In 5:20, we read that ‘‘ The Father loveth the 
Son, and showeth Him all things that Himself doeth; and He will show 
Him greater works than these, that ye may marvel”. Here God is repre- 
sented as doing great works for the purpose of producing surprise,—a motive 


THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF MIRACLES. 203 


so unworthy of God that we feel practically sure there must be some mis- 
understanding. In 12:37-40 we read: ‘‘ But though He had done so many 
miracles before them, yet they believed not on Him; that the word of Isaiah, 
the prophet might be fulfilled * * * For this cause they could not 
believe, for that Isaiah said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and He 
hardened their hearts’. If we take this language at what it literally says, 
we shall be obliged to believe that God actually prevented some from 
believing in order to secure the fulfilment of a prophecy. In 17:12, Jesus 
says: ‘Those that Thou gavest Me I have kept, and none of them is lost 
but the son of perdition; that the Scripture might be fulfilled”. This isa 
case in which one is even said to be lost in order that the Scripture might be 
fulfilled. Works of God done in order to produce wonder; men rendered 
incapable of belief in order that the prophecy of Isaiah might be fulfilled; a 
soul lost in order that a passage in a psalm might be fulfilled! If we take 
the words “In order that’’ literally—if we understand them as expressing 
the prompting motive—we must believe such teaching to be part of the 
teaching of Christ Himself. I, for one, revolt, and refuse to take the 
language literally. What is really meant is that great works of God shall be 
done, and that men shall marvel; that men did not believe and thereby 
prophecy was fulfilled; that a soul was lost, and thusa psalm was paralleled 
in the history of Christ, or perhaps that thus we knew the psalm to be in 
part Messianic. 

But there is about as much reason for revolting from the literalness that 
would have us believe that a man was born blind, or caused to sicken and 
die in order that Christ might glorify Himself and secure the belief of the 
onlookers by His works of restoration to sight and life. The words “in 
order that’ must not always be taken as expressing motive; sometimes they 
express result. Such is the case here. A man was born blind and asa 
result some will believe in Christ when they see Him give the blind man His 
sight. A man sickened and died and as a result Christ will be glorified 
when men see Him restore the dead man to life. This interpretation is 
rational and Christian, even if not warranted by the construction. The 
other, though demanded by the construction is irrational and unchristian. 
But if the rational and Christian interpretation is to be accepted, then those 
passages do not teach that Jesus healed in order to produce faith. So that 
there is nothing left to show that He ever wrought miracles for that purpose 
or with that motive. 

Taking up, now, the facts which seem to substantiate the view I here 
maintain, it must be noticed that when asked to show a sign He either 
avoided or declined the request. True, those who demanded a sign did so 
in a spirit of hostility. But it is incredible that One Who could do the won- 
derful things recorded in John could not have turned hostility into faith if 
He had chosen to do so. That He did not do so is the strongest evidence 
conceivable that His miracles were never wrought with such a motive. 

An examination of the real motives of Jesus in the performance of His 
miracles, taking them one by one, shows that He was prompted by the 


204 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


desire to bless and benefit men individually and collectively. His miracles 
were credentials, but they would have been wrought if they had been 
entirely barren of such a result. They sprang, not from His desire to 
make men believe on Him, but from His desire to do men good. 

But, it may be said, why should He not have wrought miracles for the 
purpose of producing faith in Him? Would it not have been a worthy use 
of His miraculous power? Surely it would so appear. And yet, while we 
cannot give our Lord’s reasons for holding Himself with inflexible firmness 
to the thought of doing some good instead of winning their faith, we cannot 
be too thankful that He did just as He did. In the first place, on the facts 
as here set forth, must all attempts to discredit His miracles by placing Him 
in the ranks of the wonder-workers go to pieces. It is just the motive of 
the wonder-worker that his deeds shall in some degree or manner increase 
the observers’ esteem for the performer. Jesus sought nothing in return 
for His miracles—not even the faith in Himself which would have resulted 
in fresh benefit to the believer. We have before us in Christ the portrait of 
one who did His good deeds, whether miraculous or not, out of a loving 
heart, with absolutely no mixture of any other motive. Closely connected 
with this is a second thought. The example of Christ as He is thus set be- 
fore us rebukes more effectually much of the unchristian effort of ministers 
and churches in all ages. Is it not true that we seek additions to our 
churches, in part at least, because of the strength those additions can bring 
tothe church? And does not this lead to the feeling that as some can aid the 
church more than others the stronger ones should be most coveted? Yes, 
the church does all its faithful adherents more good than they do it; but 
would not our methods and results be different if we were prompted as 
Jesus was, wholly and solely by the spirit of love? And this naturally leads 
to a third thought, Jesus stands higher in the estimation of the world today 
because He did His works out of a spirit of love than He would had He 
mixed with it a desire to secure their faith in Him. And here is the 
evidential value of miracles in its highest form. They prove His power, 
but they also prove His love. Men might wonder at His power; they adore 
Him for His love. The world will be won to Christ not because He had 
the omnipotent power of God in Him, but because He had in Him God’s 
infinite love. And this is the true evidential value of miracles. 


* FREEDOM THROUGH THE TRUTH. 
(St. JOHN 8: 31-36.) 
BY REV. EVERETT D. BURR, D. D., 


PASTOR OF THE First Baprist CHURCH IN NEWTON, NEWTON CENTRE, MASss. 


In discussing this theme, which has its place in a series of expositions 
of this Gospel, we must adhere rigidly to the terms of the Gospel in the 
definition of truth, of freedom, and the relation between the two. 

Truth in this Gospel is not an impersonal proposition, not a series of 
definitions, no metaphysical statement, nor subjective conception, but 
objectively real, personally embodied, livingly interpreted. 

Freedom is not a deliverance from external shackles by mechanical 
means, not the abrogation of control, but the emancipation of life to mani- 
fest itself in various forms, a process working not from without inward, but 
from within outward. 

As the truth is vital the freedom must be by process, evolutionary and 
dynamic. Such a freedom will be the efflorescence of life and will follow 
the truth as naturally and inevitably as the fruit results from the forces 
resident in the root. From the point of view of John’s Gospel, religion is 
divine life in the human soul. 

Definition of terms. Jesus always explained His Gospel in terms of 
life. ‘I give unto them eternal life”. ‘‘I am come that they might have 
life”. In endeavoring to explain the principles of His Gospel and the rela- 
tions which are to subsist between Himself and His followers, He chose 
some vital thing, some living organism as, for example, the vine, as alone an 
adequate explanation of the relation which is to exist between Himself and 
the believer. The indictment of Jesus against the religious leaders and the 
people of His day was that they would not come unto Him that they might 
have life. They went to the philosophers for theories, to the rabbis for pre- 
cepts; they went to the prophets for principles, and to the Mosaic code for 
ceremonies; but they would not come unto Him that they might have life. 
This indictment is in force today. There is manifest reluctance to accept 
the gift which Christ alone can give. 

Through the Christian centuries men have been forming and reform- 
ing creeds while Jesus gave the truth which would transform character. 
Even so learned a theologian and so prominent a Christian leader as 
President Patton, of Princeton, was asked whether in his judgment Chris- 
tianity was a dogma ora life, and he replied, “It is adogma”’. We see 
the fallacy of this definition when we take it back to Jesus and try to imag- 


* Delivered at the Fourth Conference, held at Grace Episcopal Church, January 13, 1904. 


205 


206 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


ine Him saying, ‘‘l am come that they might have dogma, and that they 
might have it more abundantly ”’. 

But the learned president is not the only offender in this regard. 
According to our own point of view we are apt to say that religion consists 
in a method of organization, a mode of worship, or a statement of doctrine, 
and so make it a thing of formule, creeds, ceremonies, or priesthoods, 
according to the degree of our religious susceptibility, or according to our 
religious education, or according to our loyalty to tradition, as though these 
things were in themselves the ends to be sought and not only means to one 
single end. It was with reference to that sacred thing, the law, that Paul 
said it is a “schoolmaster to lead to Christ ”’. 

What was true of the most perfect expression of religious life in the 
olden time is true of everything else religious, ecclesiastic, doctrinal, that 
their only worth is in their usefulness in leading to a personal Christ. 
Jesus found religion sinking into a creed and a ceremony. He presented 
His Gospel not as a dogma to be believed, a statement to be discussed, or 
a task to be performed, but a life to be lived. The beginning of religious 
life is not the reception of a ceremony, subscription to a creed, or submission 
to an ordinance, but contact with a person. 

His invitations were always personal. ‘“‘Come unte Me” was fre 
quently upon Hislips. The only truth which the believer was asked to accept 
was the truth embodied in Himself. “I am the truth”. The code of 
morals, the mode of conduct, the standard of life, were to be found in Him- 
self. ‘‘I am the way”. Indeed, the whole content of religion was defined 
in personal relations to Himself—‘ I am the life”. He offered Himself as 
Master and Lord, and relied upon the personal loyalty of His disciples to 
sustain them in their obedience to Him. He offered the pleasure of associ- 
ation with Him as a sufficient compensation for the hardships of service, 
even though it involved denial of self and the bearing of the cross. Devo- 
tion to the personal Christ was to be at once the impulse and reward for 
every service. It is a person, not a dogma, that invites belief; a person, not 
a law, which invites obedience. ‘‘In Him is life and the life is the light of 
men”. He inspires the thought, awakens the conscience, holds the heart, 
energizes the will. He is Himself the life-blood of Christianity, and as such 
the giver of life to those who receive Him. Nothing can create life but life 
itself. ‘‘ He that hath the Son hath life”. Jesus condemned the people of 
His time because in the light of overwhelming testimony concerning Him- 
self they still rejected Him. He presents four witnesses as establishing His 
claims upon the supreme attention of the thinkers of His day. 

first, the testimony of John. This is the more important and should 
have been the more impressive because John was led to the acceptance of 
Jesus by the resistless argument of His own personality. John was slow to 
accept Jesus because of his religious preconceptions. He had planned a 
program for Jesus in which he thought Jesus would perfectly acquiesce. 
He was, therefore, greatly amazed to have Jesus adopt a different mode of 
procedure, and could scarcely believe Him to be the promised Messiah. So 


FREEDOM THROUGH THE TRUTH. 207 


he sent messengers to ascertain whether He were indeed the Christ. He 
had predicted the axe laid at the root of the tree, the winnowing fan and the 
refining fire. But hearing of the beneficent services which Jesus was 
rendering to humanity in healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, preaching 
to the poor, he was perplexed beyond measure. Nevertheless, the testimony 
of John when once convinced, was direct and unequivocal. He stripped 
the veil which hid Christ’s glory. He quickened the vision of his contem- 
poraries, stimulated their conscience, stirred the apathy of the people of His 
time. 2 

The testimony of the works of Christ were even more convincing. The 
activities of His hand had a divine but self-evidencing force which con- 
firmed and established His claims. The works of Christ were His normal 
activities and deeds, which expressed the nature and compass of His will 
and indicated the quality of His personality. These works were not limited 
to the miracles of healing, the multiplication of the loaves, the increase of 
the wine, the raising of the dead, but the whole of His service; His total 
activity He presented in testimony as a self-revelation, the disclosure of His 
consecration, and they are all of such a character as to proclaim His divine 
commission. This entire service of Christ, reaching special expression in 
certain typical acts and deeds could not but confirm beyond a challenge the 
testimony of John. 

But as though this were not enough, the testimony of the Father was 
added. Jesus was not content to present John’s testimony or the evidence 
of His works as the complete vindication of His claims. He said, ‘‘ There 
is another that beareth witness concerning Me”’, ‘“‘ The Father which hath 
sent Me”. At His baptism the voice of the Father proclaimed Him to be 
His accepted Son, but, more than that, there accompanied Jesus in all His 
life and service an incontrovertible evidence of a deific presence as, 4. £., 
the angel song at His birth, the unusual providence which protected His 
childhood, the opening of the heavens at His baptism, the pervasive pres- 
ence which was manifest in all His acts and made His ministry so influ- 
ential and impressive. He was the manifestation of the Father’s glory, the 
express image of His person. 

As though to leave no witness unsummoned into court, there is added 
to all the evidence the /estimony of the Scriptures. ‘‘ They testify of Me”. 
Jesus’ criticism is that in searching the written word they were missing the 
living word. He admits their prolonged and eager study of the Scriptures, 
approves their motives in the research, but He criticises the superstitious 
idea that in the possession of the letter they had eternal life. ‘In them ye 
think ye have eternal life, but they are they which testify of Me, and ye 
will not come to Me that ye might have life”. 

This, then, is the indictment of Jesus against the people of His time. 
It is as true today. For, according to our point of view or our sense of 
need, we look to the schools for theory, to the church for ceremony, to 
philosophy for instruction, to priests for authority, to reason for light, to 
ordinances for inspiration, to confession for peace of soul, but will not go 


208 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


to Christ that we may have life. And in consequence the religious world of 
today is serving in many a house of bondage, the bondage of the letter, the 
bondage of form, the bondage of tradition, the bondage of definition, from 
which only the truth as it is in the personal Christ can ever give a real 
emancipation,—that is, the emancipation of life. 

‘ The Romanist presents an infallible church as the end of all revelation, 
the seat of all authority. The Protestant presents an infallible book, but 
neither book nor church has life or can give life. They are but the staff of 
the prophet laid upon the child of the Shunamite. They are but dead 
sticks,—creeds, ordinances, doctrines, priests, preachers,—without the vital 
and vitalizing contact with the living Christ. As the living person of the 
prophet must needs be stretched upon the dead, lip to lip, nerve to nerve, 
forehead to forehead, nostril to nostril, heart to heart, limb to limb, so must 
the personal character, thought, purpose and life of the living Christ be 
brought into touch with receptive souls. Jesus takes the high ground with 
reference to the inspired Scriptures which He has also taken with reference 
to other sacred objects, viz.: the temple and the Sabbath. 

You call the temple sacred and the altar a heavenly shrine? In what 
does their sanctity consist? There is One greater than the temple and only 
so far forth as the sacred structure fulfills its mission in expressing the 
presence of the greater One has it any sanctity. There is one Lord of the 
Sabbath. The Sabbathis not an énd in itself but is of worth only as it gives 
evidence of the paramount claims of Him Whois its Lord. So of the Script- 
ures. They are not sacred in themselves except as they testify of Christ. 
The bare possession of the written word, the prolonged examination of its 
mere letter, neither nor both is the condition of eternal life. The study of 
the Scriptures which is stimulated by the vague idea that it is religion, or 
that it has life, or can give life, is illusive. We may think that in them we 
have eternal life, but our Lord would undeceive us. The Scriptures are 
not religion, nor do they contain religion any more than a captain’s chart is 
navigation, or contains the knowledge of navigation, or a book of tactics 
contains warfare, or a knowledge of warfare, or a government treatise on the 
rotation of crops contains agriculture or a knowledge of farming. The 
Scriptures are a description of religion. They area testimony to the personal 
Christ. The Scriptures are not ‘Ae ¢fruth. Jesus Christ is ‘he truth. No 
book, no church, no priesthood, nor ritual, nor creed, nor mode of worship 
may diminish by one hair’s breadth the immediacy of personal contact of 
the human heart with the living personal Christ. When Jesus Christ lays 
hold of a man so that the spirit of Christ becomes the determinative energy 
of his life, that man is Christian and nothing else nor many things combined 
can make him Christian. 

“He that hath the Son hath life”. ‘If the Son make you free ye shall 
be free indeed”. This is all there is to it—the personal relation with the 
personal Christ. Christ is the one thing in the Christian life. The genius 
of this experience called Christian is being wrought into Him. There is only 
one thing which so connects a branch of the vine with the vine as to make 


FREEDOM THROUGH THE TRUTH. 209 


it a branch, and that is the life of the vine which makes itself felt in the 
branch. There is only one thing which involves a limb in the body so as 
to make it a member of that organic thing called the body and that is the 
life of the body which courses through it. In the same way there is only 
one thing which makes a man Christian and that is his vital contact with 
Christ so that the thought of Christ shall inspire his mind, the love of Christ 
move his heart, the purpose of Christ gird his will, the law of Christ confirm 
his conscience. The weakness of Christianity is that we make it complex 
and composite, and of our own conceits forge the chains which hold us in 
tether. ; 

Life is the thing. This simple fact is the whole of it. We make it con- 
sist of many things added together instead of one simple, omnipotent, 
supreme fact. We have heard so much about conviction and sentiment, 
about doctrines and ceremonies that we have come to consider Christianity 
as a matter of opinion, or of feeling, but Christianity is simply and solely a 
matter of divine life in the human soul, and there is no matter of dogma, or 
sentiment, or ceremony about it. Life is the thing. When divinely alive 
we may find our emancipation and leave the burden of philosophy, the 
thraldom of tradition, the shackles of superstition, the galvanism of emotion, 
for we dive. We may refuse to be satisfied with anything religious unless we 
realize the life-giving touch of the Son of God. No picture of the sun can 
illumine a landscape; no richly colored wax or folded paper can make a 
flower bed. We may have our sunbeams hot from the sky and the fragrance 
and beauty of life be the flowering of the in dwelling spirit of Him Who is 
the life. When once this central truth is grasped it will go with us all the 
way and lead us out of the tangles. 

First of all, zz the problems of conduct. Jesus Christ the teacher, taught 
conduct, character, life, duty,—‘‘ By their fruits ye shall know them” was 
His criterion of judgment as to behavior. ‘‘ He that heareth My sayings 
and doeth them” is the man whom He approved. The final tests in the 
adjudication of destiny are ethical tests as seen in Matt. 25.—“‘ Inasmuch as 
ye did it—fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick and the like, 
you may stand at the right hand of God in the judgment”. The problem 
of the ethics of the New Testament is the kind of character illustrated in the 
life of Jesus, and the first problem evident at the outset is the application of 
this ideal of life to conduct and character. 

He who accepts Jesus as the truth will follow His lead in the Scripture, 
not studying the doctrines of the New Testament, not studying the theology 
of the New Testament, not studying Christology. Nor will he bea New 
Testament critic studying the books. These problems are behind and 
beyond. No! he will take the New Testament as it lies before him and the 
one question before him will be what is the character exemplified and taught? 
What is the Christian character? What sort of person is built on the New 
Testament teaching? These studies are preliminary, introductory. The 
subjects are near and obvious; they open the way to the remote. The first 
thing in the New Testament is the appeal to life, conduct and character. 


210 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


The path to what is beyond lies through the investigation of the near. 
Here is a method of approach which reverses the common method which 
always begins with the remote, the obscure. Study the familiar hand-books 
of Christian ethics, ¢. g., Dorner or Martensen. They begin with the specu- 
lative. The opening chapters are purely theological, metaphysical, and have 
nothing to do with conduct and character. The whole discussion is of the 
nature of God, then descends into the realm of conduct and lays down such 
rules of conduct as are deducible from theological tenets; but with Jesus as 
teacher we take the other method of procedure. First the simple, the near, 
the practical, the personal, then the greater visions of what lies beyond. 
First ethics, then theology ; first life, then truth; first the example of Christ, 
then the person of Christ; first the interpretation of Christ, then the know- 
ledge of Christ. ‘‘He who will do the will of God shall know”. The 
approach to the New Testament through the path of ethics is distinguished 
from the usual treatment and more consistent with the New Testament 
itself. The theology of the future is not prerequisite to the understanding 
of the character of Jesus, but the very reverse. The character and life of 
Jesus are fundamental to the theology of the future. Look at the ethics of 
Jesus fora moment. In announcing His morality Jesus took three departures 
from other systems: Mosaic, Pharisaic, Graeco-Roman. These were the 
three moral systems of His time, the systems respectively of His ancestral 
religion, the then principal sect, and that of the outside world. Every utter- 
ance of Jesus bearing on morals was spoken in contemplation of one or the 
other of these classes. In departing from the Mosaic system He sought to 
develop morality from its primitive rudeness and simplicity. In departing 
from the Pharisaic system He sought to recall it from the ritualistic diver- 
gence to the proper subjects of morality, and in departing from the Grzeco- 
Roman He sought to substitute the tender for the heroic virtue. 

His object, therefore, as viewed from these three points of departure 
was respectfully to fulfil, to correct and to supplant, or to affect an exten- 
sion, a reformation andarevolution. The ethical classifications in the teach- 
ings of Jesus become clear when we understand His point of view. 

Jesus was infinitely patient toward some sins, but was terrifically severe 
with the Pharisees. His estimate of the Pharisee and the Publican was a 
subversion of all accepted standards of conduct. Jesus Christ wanted to 
find one initial quality which the sinner might hold, and the typical Pharisee 
lacked, namely,—docility, receptivity; not the quality of wrong-doing in a 
life, but the quality of self-sufficiency was the great hindrance to goodness, 
the state of mind which knows no lack and is not open to modifications. 
His commendation of another type—the child—is evidence of His estimate 
of the worth of teachableness. 

Childlikeness is this initial trait. It is not afflicted with self-sufficiency. 
The chief obstacle to the Christian religion is satiety. This is hopeless. How 
can we offer afeast when a man has fed? Hunger, thirst, craving, openness; 
these are the qualities of mind on which Jesus lays emphasis. It is not the 
sins of the flesh against which He inveighs, or the sins of the spirit. It is 


FREEDOM THROUGH THE TRUTH. 211 


the condition of being surfeited and therefore unteachable. Given teach- 
ableness, then His faith is in moral growth. He does not say that this is a 
good man and that man is bad, but this man is moving toward an end, there 
is hope of him. His movements are dynamic, evolutionary. Jesus always 
looked for this openness toward growth. Consider, for example, His treat- 
ment of Peter. Jesus saw in him something teachable. This explains His 
continued faith in Judas. He hoped for him; there was something in him 
to make Him believe in growth. He had not lost faith in him. Add to 
openness of mind the principle of growth and you have the ground-work and 
the standards of Jesus’ ethics. Now compare the text-books on Christian 
morals and make the contrast with the Gospel teaching in their mode of 
approach. Dorner’s system of Christian ethics so highly systematized is all 
an inference from theology instead of as inthe New Testament where ethics 
is propedeutic to theology. As one of my teachers has said, ‘‘ This process 
is like drawing the fire down instead of lighting it on the ground. The 
draught is the wrong way, and we cannot see because of the smoke”. In 
the Gospel we trace the path of Jesus in His steps; we listen to Jesus and 
hear Him talk about conduct and character. To follow His simple, elemental, 
inductive method of study takes us away from classification. We go through 
life, not as the professional botanist, to pluck, dry, classify, put away in a 
drawer, label, and perhaps exhibit the selected specimens of conduct. We 
go rather as a nature lover who walks through the fields and watches the 
lilies as they grow. Jesus is not a system maker, but an observer with the 
highest qualities of insight. He watchesthe people as they act. His ethics 
are based on the principles of growth; He deals not with character as it is, 
but with character as it maybe. Heconsiders the issue, like a bulb planted 
in winter. He discerns the possibility of beauty inthe spring. This is why 
the nethermost sins are not hopeless from the point of view of Jesus. States 
of mind interest Him. If the roots are dead there is no hope. So the 
Pharisee and the Publican in ordinary estimates were clearly distinguishable. 
So are the rose and the daisy. From all appearances and by ordinary 
standards of value the rose is to be preferred, but the great question is what 
will happen next spring? Jesus looking on the Publican saw in him promise 
and possibility and knew that he would come to something, but the Pharisee 
was dead at the root. What hope is there in the character? This is the 
question. Is there to come something from the unpromising stem which 
will justify keeping it? If not, cutit off. ‘To be carnally minded is death, 
to be spiritually minded is life”. Here is the promise of growth. So with 
the lead of Jesus we are able to get at the real in character and find emanci- 
pation from the bondage of ordinary classifications of conduct in the discovery 
of that which is vital. 

Secondly. In the problems of doctrine. The history of religion plainly 
reveals a tendency toward elaboration. In the process there is an inevitable 
loss of some of the elements of original character. A change of base is not 
a change for the better. Religions deteriorate ; they lose their finer ingre- 
dients. The average Mahometan today is not nearly so good a man as 


212 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Mahomet was. Judaism in the time of Christ was very different from the 
Judaism of Moses. It is equally true of Christianity. The truth which 
Christ declared is obscured in tradition; the life which He emphasized is 
lost in dogmatic systems. The most hopeful religious movement today is 
the determined effort to get back to Christ, to unload the superfluous 
baggage of theological dogma, to set back the roots of all Christian growth 
into the original soil of the real life of God. It isa reaction from the exter- 
nal to the internal, from the accidental to the essential. Back and up the 
stream of religious life the earnest souls of this latest of the centuries are 
pressing their way in order that they may trace the current to the fountain 
head and discover a clear stream. The longest dogmatic systems are the 
atest. The Romish Church has continued the elaboration of its articles of 
faith through fourteen centuries, adding the last in 1870. We have to go 
back for brevity. The thirty-nine articles in the Westminster Confession 
are more brief than the Catholic creed. The creed of Athanasius is shorter 
still, the Nicene creed less elaborate. The nearer the source the simpler 
the statements. The Apostolic creed is the simplest of all, but the pure 
river of the water of life is today being traced back to the very altars of God 
where the stream issues forth clear as crystal uncontaminated by the findings 
of Augsberg, Trent, Chalcedon or Nicea, back to the New Testament itself 
in which are the pure springs—there to find the personal Christ. 


‘““ Hushed be the noise and the strife of the schools, 
Volume and pamphlet, sermon and speech, 
The lips of the wise and the prattle of fools, 
Let the Son of Man teach! 


“ Who has the key of the future but He? 
Who can unravel the knots of the skein? 
We have groaned and have travailed and sought to be free, 
We have travailed in vain. 


“‘ Bewildered, dejected, and prone to despair, 
To Him as at first do we turn and beseech, 
Our ears are all open! Give heed to our prayer! 
O Son of Man teach!” 


The essentials of religion as defined by Paul who received his illumina- 
tion from the personal Christ are but two,—a person and a fact, Jesus and 
the resurrection. Peter’s succinct statement, the summary of which he had 
learned after seven months with Jesus in northern Galilee was: ‘Thou art 
the Christ, the Son of the living God’’. And the final word of John reveals 
the heart of the matter—‘ He that hath the Son hath life”. In the atmos- 
phere of the New Testament there is the emphasis of life. The councils 
of the centuries have been elaborating definitions, determining theories, 
settling opinions, and have wrapped themselves round in the shackles of 
paralyzing discussion. 

Take up any system where you will. They have nothing to do with 
character or conduct. They are metaphysical, not ethical. They discuss 
the relation of the three persons in the trinity; the relation of the divine and 
human natures in the person of Jesus; the relation of the sacrifice of Jesus 


FREEDOM THROUGH THE TRUTH. 213 


to the divine law; the relation of the will of man to the will of God; the 
mysterious nature of the sacraments and many such like things they discuss. 
Doubtless these ought they to have done but not to have left the other 
undone. One breathes another atmosphere in the teachings of Jesus. 
He speaks of a Father’s love and care; His beneficent providence; the 
freedom from care which comes from trust in that love; the obligation of 
children to be like their Father; the importance of unselfish service; the 
excellence of the tender virtues; the estimate of the inner quality of life as 
compared with the merely external and formal. This is not theory nor 
theology. It is life. As Henry Van Dyke has said: ‘Theology is not 
religion for the same reason that biology is not life”. Wherever there is 
this conception of what is vital in religion in the actual contact with the 
living Christ there is life real, throbbing, essential. This emphasis of the 
essentials has found expression lately in the chapel at Brighton where the 
eloquent Robertson preached. There has been placed a memorial in the 
form of Hoffman’s ‘‘ Christ Among the Doctors of the Law”’, and as express- 
ing the attitude of mind of their beloved preacher, the givers of the tablet 
have inscribed the legend—‘‘ They were thinking about theology, he was 
thinking about God”. 


Thirdly. Inthe problems of worship. The tendency toward elaboration 
is as apparent in forms of worship and methods of organization until some- 
times it is difficult to discover the earnest, simple activities of the church of 
the apostles amid the elaborate ritual and complex ceremony of today. The 
unselfish ministrations of the apostolic church has been displaced by the 
selfish administration of the church of the later centuries. We have to go 
back for simplicity. The methods that have gradually come into use through 
the centuries have obscured the simple ways of the apostles. The emphasis 
of the church as an organization has given rise to an elaboration of ritual, 
an enrichment of ceremony which makes the church appear as an end in 
itself. Ecclesiastical form is thought to express the whole content of religion 
and in the thought of the church as an organization is lost the more Christly 
thought of the church as an organism. Simplicity is fundamental to all 
religious life. : 

In recent explorations in Egypt it is recorded that Cailliaud found some 
excavations in a mountain which on entering proved to be emerald mines 
apparently unvisited since the times of the Ptolemies. There at the entrance 
lay the lamps and the tools with which the ancient miners had worked appeal- 
ing with silent eloquence for other hands to take them up and dig for new 
treasures which lay in costly profusion all around, and with the old instru- 
ments these new workmen in the latest of the centuries dug out the emerald 
gems. 

The apostolic church, fresh from the hands of the Holy Ghost had four 
great characteristics,—love of truth, love of one another, frequent remem- 
brance of Christ, and immediate connection with Him in prayer. They 
continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the break- 
ing of bread and in prayers. There are some things in the church more 


214 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


important than exactness of ordinances, or ornateness of worship, and one 
of them is the divine breath. 

A work among the mariners is carried on in New York harbor by the 
Episcopal City Mission. The missionary was asked by an ecclesiastical 
purist whether his church were high or low. He replied, ‘It depends upon 
the tide”. There were some simple, great matters which inspired the 
consecrated disciples in the first century and they engaged in a manifold 
ministry, a ministry of life as penetrating as human need, as comprehensive 
as divine love. 

You will remember John Stuart Blackie’s confession of faith. It has 
the true ring. 

“Creeds and confessions? High church or low? 
I cannot say; but you would vastly please us 
If with some pointed Scripturé you could show 
To which of these belonged the Saviour Jesus. 
I think to all ornone. Not curious creeds, 

Or ordered forms of churchly rule He taught, 

But soul of love that blossomed into deeds 

With human good and human blessing fraught. 

On me nor priest, nor presbyter, nor pope, 

Bishop nor dean, may stamp a party name. 

But Jesus with His largely human scope 

The service of my human life may claim. 

Let prideful priests do batile about creeds 

The church is mine that does most Christ-like deeds”. 


That church has the most divinity in it which does the most for human- 
ity. Humanity wants life, not theories about life. Thechurch that willsave 
a world must be divinely alive. It will not be a rich church nor a poor 
church, liturgical or non-liturgical. Life consists not in ornateness nor 
plainness, ‘‘ Neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but 
a new creature’. Such a church will subordinate tradition to truth, will 
insist that even Augustine and Calvin shall yield the throne to Jesus, will 
insist that councils, creeds, priests and fathers combined shall not in the 
least diminish the immediacy of the pressure of the very words of Christ or 
divert the permanent and paramount authoritativeness of His word. Such 
a church will keep the conscience of Christendom face to face and eye to 
eye with our Lord, will provide an exhilarating atmosphere for Christian 
activity and impart nerve to Christian enterprise. Such a church will 
emancipate the thought of God’s people from entanglements and complica- 
tions by its constant fealty to the personal and vital elements of Christian 
truth. To the member of such a church Christ will be the one thing in the 
Christian life. He will know Christ as a personal force. Christ will ener- 
gize him, inspire him, be the motive of all he does. He will yield to Christ 
exact, absolute and prompt obedience. He will bein vital touch with Christ 
by virtue of his own personal faith. To him Christ is the vine of which he 
is a branch and all his Christian experiences are a matter of being wrought 
into Christ, for Christ and Christ’s spirit are the determinative energies of 
his life. This is the church for which the world is waiting. This is the 


FREEDOM THROUGH THE TRUTH. 2105 


simple vital truth which humanity craves. The ordinary mind with difficulty 
understands the elaborate systems of doctrine which the centuries have 
perfected, nor can it appreciate the elaborate cults of worship which are 
maintained in the name of religion; but the people know the life of Jesus 
when they see it, and in Him Christianity consists not of many things com- 
bined, but one thing. 

Once in immediate contact with Jesus Christ, the seeker for truth is not 
confused with complicated questions of convictions or conduct. These are 
incident, not essence. Life is the essential thing. Where there is life there 
will be fruit. Life will surely manifest itself. The Christianity of Christ is 
not a system of doctrine, nor a form of worship, nor a code of morals, but 
divine life in the human soul. 

To be sure, the Christ-filled man will think deeply and accurately ; he 
will also behave well, but neither opinion nor behavior, neither creed nor 
covenant constitute the essence of Christian experience. Life is the thing. 
Let the truth as it is in Jesus be accepted in its simplicity and its entirety 
and the world’s emancipation is achieved. He did not formulate a definite 
series of the necessary articles of faith, nor did He summarize the things 
which it is essential to believe. Such a statement is not essential to the 
religion of Jesus. He did not insist upon certain forms of worship. ‘God 
is a spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in 
truth’’; not in Gerizim, nor in Jerusalem is the place to worship, but 
wherever and whenever the reverent soul lifts itself to God. 

He did not fix a heirarchy of virtues and classify actions by any set and 
fixed ethical standards. He seemed quite willing that the opinions of His 
disciples should be flexible so long as their faith was firm and their life 
eternal. He seemed to have anticipated the subtle temptation which has 
overtaken the Christian disciple in all ages to emphasize the intellectual ele- 
ment in the religious life on the one hand, or the external on the other, and 
so He taught, explained, and reiterated that life was paramount and prece- 
dent. He led His disciples to larger views of intellectual freedom and 
responsibility. He bade them see that in the nature of the case opinion is 
to life what letter is to spirit, what scaffold is to structure. The words 
which He spake unto them, they were spirit, they were life. In the classical 
passage (John 4) he teaches clearly that worship depends upon a true con- 
ception of God, that it must be spiritual as opposed to sensuous, that it must 
be in truth, dealing with reality, giving adequate and veracious expression 
to genuine desire and veritable emotions. 

In the public worship which will accord with these simple principles 
the Praise will not be rendered perfunctorily by certain lay figures arrayed 
in the latest achievements of the dressmaker’s art, conspicuously exposed 
to the gaze of the curious, nor will it be the pyrotechnical vocalizations of 
certain musical prodigies whose delight is in the law of the echo. It will 
rather be the spontaneous expression of real emotion, gratitude, joy, rever- 
ence—praise in which every worshipper will participate and pour out his 
soul in exultant song. 


216 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


The Prayer will not be an elocutionary discourse which brings the wor- 
shipper into communion with him who prays; it will rather be the voice of 
the heart, as natural an outbreathing as when the flowers swing their 
censers in the temple of the morning. 


The Preaching will present God, not the preacher; will awaken the 
conscience, not tickle the itching ear ; will ennoble and enrich the life of the 
hearer till he will feel that his minister is the minister of Christ by whose 
hand he has the gift of life and has that life more abundantly. 


Fourthly. In the problems of social service. Who shall give humanity 
the life and liberty it craves? This opportunity belongs to the church of 
the living God. What is the New Testament idea of the church? It is 
the body of Christ, the reincarnation of the Son of God, the incarnation of 
the Holy Ghost. As such she must express in her conduct, her doctrine, 
her worship, her service the spirit which animates her. Christ must be the 
source of her life, Christ the body of truth which she teaches, Christ the 
source of her power. There is only one simple fact which constitutes the 
organism called church, namely, her living relation to Christ. There is 
no church except as the members of the organism are livingly knit into 
Him. The church is organism, not mechanism. 


In the deepest sense, therefore, the church may embody the truth which 
will give humanity the liberty and life it craves. She may demonstrate that 
God localizes Himself in her. She may be the organ of the life of God. 
For this church the world waits. Humanity wants life, the touch of omnip- 
otence, contact with God. The church of the living Christ today may be 
the embodiment of divine love, wisdom and power. She may work in the 
world as distinct amid the organizations of the time as the life of Abraham 
was amid the materialistic civilization of the Mesopotamian Valley, as dis- 
tinct as the life of Enoch, who walked with God, who worked and wor- 
shipped in a spiritual temple invisible yet real and eternal. While other 
men build theologies, settle definitions, elaborate theories and try by multi- 
plied and complex agencies to affect the life of men, the church may triumph 
as -Elijah on Carmel, or Peter at Pentecost, who linked their activities to 
the dynamics of the skies and were personally moved by the omnipotent 
energies of God. 

Such a church may conquer mountainous difficulties, expel insistant 
and rebellious evil, solve vexed and intricate problems, and bring in a new 
heaven and a new earth. Herself delivered from the bondage of the letter, 
and tradition, and form, having found the emancipation of spirit and life, 
she can deliver humanity from the bondage of sin and death. The social 
evangel of Jesus was spirit and life. He began with life at its sources. His 
salvation of society, like salvation of the soul, was to save the body through 
the soul. His methods in redemption were, therefore, vital, not mechanical. 
He would transform the soul of mankind and so change the civilization in 
which they live. Only the life of Christ can raise civilization from the 
dead. The efficiency of Christ’s method has been vindicated through 2000 
years of history. Yet it is astonishing how difficult it is to get it practically 


FREEDOM THROUGH THE TRUTH. 27h 


accepted by the social workers of to-day. The external method is so plausi- 
ble, so bewitching, so easy. There never was a time when some reformer 
was not ready to suggest some Medea’s bath, some Merlin’s charm, or, with 
Carlisle, some Morison’s pill which can cure all the ills of the race. The 
shores of the social sea are strewn with the wrecks of these futile and 
mechanical attempts at changing the condition of men. It is less expensive 
just to put a face on things. Some people are yet misled by the error that 
the shell can form the organism, or the feathers grow the bird. There are 
yet advocates of the theory that environment makes the man; there are 
yet reveries of sentiment and romance about the New Jerusalem builded 
with jewels and paved with gold, and Jesus yet weeps over the city and 
society because the people will not let Him build their Jerusalem for them. 
These methods and agencies leave the essential difficulty of the problem 
untouched. 

Only the truth as it is in Jesus can make men free. ‘“‘ The law of the 
spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made us free from the law of sin and 
death”. We must bring to bear upon dilapidated and disabled souls 
the quickening breath of the divine life and so awaken them to the appreci- 
ation of that better life which they may have abundantly. 

To be sure, men will say they are not dead as the Pharisees declared 
they had ‘‘never been in bondage to any man’”’, yet there was Egypt and 
Babylon in their history, and the Roman eagles were visible in the temple, 
flaunting their wings in the castle. Men are as ingenious as they in ignor- 
ing the disagreeable facts which blind so many to their fetters. Sin’s fet- 
ters are riveted when the bondsman lifts his manacled hand and protests his 
freedom, but slavery is not an affair of political or social arrangement. It 
is a condition of the spirit. Death is not physical collapse, but separation 
from God. Real bondage is that which enslaves the will and prevents 
doing right. ‘‘ Whoso committeth sin is the servant of sin”. The most real 
servitude and the only terrible death is that perverted condition of soul in 
which the better nature is incapable of casting off the chains woven by its 
own acts, and in trying to do so throws aside the restraints of virtue only to 
be bound the more tightly by the heavier fetters of vice. This deeper 
human need is revealed as by a lightning flash in the words of John (1 John 
5:12) and the words of Jesus illumine the path into the larger liberty of the 
sons of God. 

““He that hath the Son hath life’’—‘‘If the Son make you free you 
shall be free indeed ”’. ; 


*THE HOME AT BETHANY AND THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 
BY REV. DONALD SAGE MACKAY, D. D., 


Minister of the Fifth Avenue Collegiate Church, New York. 


Friendship, as an influence in Christ’s life, was neither trivial nor inci- 
dental. If it be true that a man is known by his friends, it may be said 
with perfect reverence that the character of Jesus, in its human relations, 
can be interpreted in the light of His friendships. Apart, therefore, from 
their historical interest, the friendships of Christ have a definite psychologi- 
cal value. In ways most suggestive and illuminating they interpret cer- 
tain fundamental qualities in His nature, without which, indeed, His 
humanity would be incomplete. On the one hand, for example, they reflect 
Christ’s capacity for creating friendship, a certain sympathetic power of 
drawing men and women to Himself on the basis of loving intimacy. On 
the other hand, they reveal the need of friendship itself as a feature of His 
nature, a craving of His heart which demanded the sympathy and love of 
kindred souls for its expression. 

But more than that, in addition to this historical and psychological 
interest, the friendships of Jesus must be studied in the light of their spir- 
itual and experimental value. Nothing would be more inadequate than to 
think of these friendships as merely reminiscences of His human life on 
earth. They are, in fact, the pledge of His continuous presence in the 
experience of His people. They are the historical type of that mystical 
communion which the believer enjoys as the supreme achievement of faith. 
The friendship of Jesus, mediated through the Holy Spirit, is the dynamic 
in the Christian consciousness. There is no simpler, yet more profound 
definition of Christianity asa spiritual influence in the soul than in these 
three words, ‘‘ Friendship with Jesus’’. In these words lies the secret of the 
divine life in man, transfiguring character and inspiring conduct. ‘“ Hence- 
forth I call you not servants but friends.” 

The Christian life, it may be said, passes through three distinct stages 
—that of the bond-servant, where the radical motive is compulsion through 
fear; that of the hireling, where the controlling elements are duty and 
reward, and finally that of the friend, where spiritual experience has resolved 
itself ‘into personal fusion with Christ, in which the dominant influence is 
love expressing itself in passionate devotion. 

That is the flower of Christ’s friendship. To that high destiny He 
sought to lift evéry man who felt the touch of His spirit. Very beautifully 
is that spiritual aspect of His friendship brought out in that verse in St. 
Mark’s Gospel which records the calling of the twelve. In Mark 3:14 we 


* Delivered at the Seventh Conference, held at the Central Congregational Church, April 13, 1904. 


218 


THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 219 


read, ‘‘And He appointed twelve that they might be with Him”. A world 
of spiritual suggestion lies in that preposition “with”. Primarily he chose 
these twelve men, not to cast out devils or preach the gospel or baptize. 
Back of all these things was this fundamental condition: He chose them 
“that they might be with Him’. Fellowship with Christ must antedate 
service for Christ. Our friendship with the Master is the secret of our 
activity for the Master. To know this atmosphere of personal communion 
with Him is the highest culture of which the soul is capable. Friendship, 
the reservoir of service; lacking that, service becomes drudgery and duty 
sordid. 

It is a frequent criticism of Christian ethics that the New Testament is 
singularly reticent on the subject of friendship. While it is specific enough 
as to duties of husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and ser- 
vants, on the claims and duties of friendship, the New Testament, it is 
often asserted, has no word to say. While Pagan thought found its noblest 
utterances in its glowing apostrophes to friendship, Christian literature on 
the other hand, in and out of the canon, has nothing that can compare with 
the great classics on this theme. Jeremy Taylor, indeed, amongst the Puri- 
tans, has a charming essay on the “ Pleasures and Offices of Friendship ”’,— 
next to his book on “ Holy Living and Dying’”’, his best piece of writing,— 
but even Jeremy Taylor, writing from the Christian point of view, draws his 
most effective illustrations from the classic authors of Greece and Rome. 

But the assertion that the New Testament has nothing to say on the 
pleasures and offices of friendship is only partially true. What it omits to 
say by precept or aphorism, the New Testament does convincingly by sug- 
gestion and example. If the word friendship occurs only once in the New 
Testament, and then only as aterm of condemnation, the atmosphere of 
friendship in its highest and purest sense pervades the book like the aroma 
of Mary’s ointment. The new commandment is the charter of Christian 
friendship. That we love one another as He loved us is to be the measure 
of our spiritual kinship with all men, and from the passion of that divine 
love, Christian friendship draws its inspiration. 

The home at Bethany was the geographical center of the friendships of 
Jesus. To the Fourth Gospel we owe an imperishable debt of gratitude for 
that exquisite chapter in the Saviour’s life. Bethany, lying peacefully 
amidst the uplands of Judea amongst the vine-clad hills, and shadowed by 
its spreading date palms, was the Elim in Christ’s life, the quiet resting 
place towards which in His weariest days He turned His feet, not doubting 
the welcome of love which awaited Him there. Bethany brought the touch 
of home to a homeless man. Over that village home there rests for the 
Christian an almost idyllic light, peaceful, restful, like that of the early 
morning before the birds are awake. With its tender memories it enshrined 
the holy human sympathy of Jesus. His place in every home is made 
secure by His presence in that simple household, a presence that con- 
secrates the family and makes the humblest home a sanctuary. His love 
for man is made intense and personal by His love for Martha and Mary 


220 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


and Lazarus—Mary, ‘“ whose eyes were homes of silent prayer’; Martha, 
whose heart was burdened down with care, and Lazarus, whose vision 
pierced the night of death. 

As one studies Christ’s relations in that Bethany home, one becomes 
conscious of a fourfold manifestation of His friendship with those whose 
intimacy with Him had ripened into mutual confidence and love. 

First, we see Christ there as the gezza/ friend, when, with a touch of 
half playful humor He rebuked, if one may use a word so strong, the 
anxious worriment of Martha, busy with her household cares. To Luke we 
owe that charming glimpse of the contrasted temperament of the two sisters, 
amplified by John under different circumstances. 

Second, we see Him as the sympathetic friend, when in the hour of 
their great affliction He comes to them and mingled His tears with theirs at 
the grave of Lazarus. 

Third, we behold Him as the eae Jriend, when with voice of divine 
authority He declared Himself the Resurection and the Life and com- 
manded Lazarus to come forth. 

Fourthly, we witness in Jesus the gratefu/ friend, when with imperish- 
able words of gratitude He acknowledged Mary’s act of devotion in breaking 
over Him the precious spikenard and vindicated her love for all time in the 
face of the vulgar criticisms of Judas and his associates. 

These then were at least four distinctive notes in the friendship of 
Jesus as it unfolded in the home at Bethany; geniality, sympathy, gratitude 
and divine helpfulness from the shadow of death. Combine these qualities 
and they reveal the intense and beautiful humanness of Christ’s relations 
with those He loved. His was a friendship that invited confidence and 
disarmed fear. Take, for example, Martha’s approach to Him (recorded 
by St. Luke), when in a moment of petulance she appealed to Him to send 
Mary back to her household duties instead of monopolizing the Master’s 
attention. The strong aorist verb, meaning literally ‘‘ coming up suddenly ”’ 
to Him, betrays not merely a touch of temper on Martha’s part, but a cer- 
tain familiarity of approach which is suggestive of the intimacy which 
existed between Christ and these two sisters. And it is in the light of that 
unconstrained confidence that we are able to appreciate the geniality of 
Christ’s reply. It is hardly.fair to call it a rebuke. It is rather the half 
bantering response of one who, recognizing the anxious hospitality of a gen- 
erous hostess, seeks to relieve her anxiety, while at the same time defending 
the more spiritually-minded Mary who sat at His feet. 

But most beautifully this mark of utter confidence in His sympathy was 
shown by these sisters in the message they sent to Jesus when Lazarus fell 
ill. ‘Him whom Thou lovest is sick”. That is all. The message con- 
tained no request. It was enough, these grief-stricken sisters felt, to tell 
the Master that His friend was sick. Friendship has no higher mark than 
that. The silence, the reserves of a true friendship are more eloquent than 
its speech. The language of the heart in the hour of its necessity fills up 
the gaps of the broken speech, and what the lips cannot articulate, love 
interprets and love fulfils. 


— 


—_ - 


THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 221 


It is not without significance that the friendship of Jesus towards the 
household at Bethany found its highest expression in the hour of a great 
sorrow and through a great self-sacrifice. The eleventh chapter of John is 
a life-commentary on the exceeding preciousness of Christ’s presence in the 
last and saddest moments of experience. To that grief-shadowed home He 
came, even though He knew His coming meant the hastening of His own 
death, as it proved, and forgetful of self, forgetful for the moment even of 
His own power over death, He bowed His head in tears so deep, so intense 
that those standing near could not but exclaim, ‘‘ Behold how He loved him ”. 
Never, save on the cross, were the human and the divinein Christ so sharply 
contrasted, and yet too, never so matchlessly blended as when, one moment 
weeping in sympathy by the grave, the next moment He said: ‘Lazarus, 
come forth”. Than that act of bringing back life from the tomb, friendship 
could only go one step further, the laying down of His own life for His 
friends. And that coronation of friendship Jesus reached on the cross. 

Turning now for a few moments to Christ’s friendships with His disci- 
ples, one is impressed at once by their variety. The friendships of Jesus 
_ were not temperamental. They were not limited by the presence or 
absence of certain qualities in those He invited to His intimacy. How 
various and contrasted for example, were the types of character represented 
in these twelve men,—the choleric Peter, the melancholic John, the phleg- 
matic Andrew, the cautious Thomas, the secretive Judas; in each and all of 
these men there was some distinct quality that called out the Master’s love. 
It is indeed a significant fact, that while John was the beloved disciple who 
most deeply had caught the secret of Christ’s love, Judas was the only one 
of the twelve whom Christ ever addressed as “‘ Friend”. In that moment 
of betrayal in the garden, as though in that last moment He sought to stay 
the traitor’s kiss, the last pleading of the Master’s love and the final appeal 
to the holy memories of the past could find no deeper expression than this, 
“Friend, wherefore art thou come?” It was, as has been said, the last 
pleading of love, the appeal of a friendship that to the very end sought to 
restrain the treacherous hands that destroyed it. 

What then was the basis of this friendship of Christ? What was the 
‘supreme condition of entrance into this holy fellowship? The answer to 
that question is found in the fifteenth chapter of John. If the eleventh 
chapter, with its exquisite picture of the Bethany home is the historical 
record of His friendship, the fifteenth chapter with its beautiful parable of 
the vine and the branches is the spiritual record of His friendship. Picture 
for a moment the scene. The fourteenth chapter ends with the words 
spoken in the upper room, “Arise, let us go hence”. Immediately after the 
fifteenth chapter begins with the memorable words, ‘‘I am the true vine”’. 
What is the point of connection? As Christ arose with the eleven disciples 
and stepped out on the stairway leading down to the silent road, bathed 
that Passover night in the radiance of the paschal moon, His eye would 
naturally rest on the richly clustered vine that climbed against the wall of 
the house. Instantly it gave the key to the thoughts of His heart. He was 


222 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


about to leave those men. Never again could the conditions of intercourse 
be precisely the same asin these years in which they had sojourned together. 
But the love, the intimacy, the confidence was to be the same. How then 
could He make clear to them that though separated in the flesh their kin- 
ship was not to lessen, but to deepen in the years to come? And the vine, 
growing there before them as they stepped out into the silent Passover 
night, supplied the thought. As the vine drew its life from the root buried 
out of sight, and as the branches brought forth their fruit through the unseen 
currents of life which flowed from that hidden root, so henceforth their life 
in Him and His friendship with them would be realized by their spiritual 
communion with an unseen friend. So the great words were spoken, 
‘“* Abide in Me; henceforth I call you not servants but friends”. That word 
‘“*henceforth”’ marked a cleavage line in their spiritual history. On one 
side ‘‘servants’’; on the other side “friends”. Strange, surely, that not 
till the night of His leaving them, when, according to human standards 
friendship was to end, He admitted these eleven men to the high intimacy 
of friendship. Now what was the condition of entrance into this richer 
experience; How were they to cross over the “‘ henceforth ” from servitude 
to friendship? The condition was obedience. Mystical in its character, this 
higher friendship was to be supremely practical in its realization. The 
ethical condition of obedience was emphatic. Here, indeed, we touch one 
of the most suggestive features in the Fourth Gospel. I sometimes think 
that a great work has yet to be written on the ethics of St. John. The most 
spiritual of all the evangelists, the ethical note of his Gospel is as clear as 
the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount. This is especially true of St. John’s 
doctrine of obedience. In John’s Gospel, obedience has a threefold influence, 
first as the condiion of intellectual illumination; second, as the con- 
dition of spiritual communion, and third, as the condition of peace of soul. 
“Tf any man will do the will, he shall know the doctrine, whether it be of 
God”’,—obedience as the organ of intellectual illumination. ‘“ Ye are My 
friends if you do whatsoever I command you”,—obedience as the organ of 
spiritual communion. ‘If ye know these things, happy (blessed) are ye if 
ye do them,—obedience the organ of blessedness and peace of soul. 

. Through that obedience, the friendship of Christ as a spiritual experi- 
ence was intended to produce a threefold blessing. First, transformation 
of motive in service; second, revelation of purpose in discipline; and third, 
assimilation of character through fellowship. These are the three distinctive 
marks of that deeper life of fellowship to which on the eve of His departure 
He admitted His disciples. First, transformation of motive in service. The 
motive of service in the slave or bond-servant is either fear or reward; the 
motive in the friend is co-operative love. The friend anticipates his master’s 
word and rejoices in doing his master’s will. Friendship is the transfigura- 
tion of service; the creation of a new motive; redeeming life from its 
drudgery, and sending the pulse-beat of joy into the most trivial task. 

Secondly, friendship in this spiritual interpretation, is the reve/ation of 
purpose in discipline. ‘1 call you friends” said Jesus, “for all things that I 


THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 223 


have heard of My Father I make known to you”. The slave works in 
ignorance of his master’s purpose. ‘‘ His not to reason why, his but to do 
or die”. But it is the privilege of friendship to share its plans, and to the 
friends of Jesus there is given a constant unfolding of His purposes for them 
and through them. Through all the web and woof of experience, the friend 
of Jesus can trace the golden threads which reveal the pattern of the Father’s 
love. So suffering and sorrow became transfigured through the revelation 
of a divine purpose in life, and submission to the divine will becomes the 
soul’s deepest joy. 

Lastly, the friendship of Jesus as a spiritual communion, brings with it 
assimilation of character through daily fellowship. Theservant may grow in 
faithfulness and sympathy with his master, but friendship, as an intimacy of 
soul, brings with it, as its supreme blessing, the ever deepening assimilation 
of life and character into the likeness of the Master himself. And that is 
the coronation of the Friendship of Jesus. 


ae Ps 


*THE CROSS THE WORLD’S EVANGEL, 
OR THE CHRISTIAN LAW OF SACRIFICE IN RELATION TO MISSIONS. 
(St. JOHN 12: 20-32.) 
BY REV. HENRY C. MABIEF,D. D., 


SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSIONARY UNION, BOSTON, MAss. 


The Occasion.—I\t is the third day of Passion Week;; it is the last day 
of our Lord’s public ministry to His own people Israel,—the day on which 
‘“He departed and hid Himself from them’. He had come “unto His 
own, and His own received Him not’. Because the house of Israel knew 
not the day of her visitation, she was left to herself desolate. 

Just at this juncture an event of great significance occurs. Among the 
multitude of those who had come upto the Feast of the Passover were 
many Gentile proselytes to the Jewish faith, who at least half believed that 
Jesus was ‘the desire of all nations’. Among these were certain Greeks 
who wished to see Jesus. He had just made His royal entry into Jerusa- 
lem, and His name was on all tongues; they must not miss the opportunity 
of personal audience with One to Whom the hosannas had been sung. The 
announcement of this visit fell on the spirit of Jesus in a psychic hour, and 
it was the harbinger of a new epoch of universal evangelization. 

Such a visit must have presented to Jesus a strong temptation. The 
whole Roman empire was about to open to apostolic approach; the coming 
Europe would be atheatre for its operation. Britain would be His to exploit, 
the new world His to pre-empt. 

His vision, sweeping across all the oceans, embraced Japan, China, 
India, Africa, and all the Islands of the sea, waiting for His coming. The 
prospect was such as never greeted statesman or world-conqueror before. 

But fascinating as was this prospect, it was not His to realize in a per- 
sonal, earthly career. A great summer with teeming harvest awaiting other 
reapers than Himself, was ahead, but for Him—winter, death, the death of 
the cross intervened. Even as these new Magi knocked at the door, that 
cross loomed high on the horizon. Without pausing even to give answer 
to the uncommon request, His reply was instant: ‘‘ The hour is come that 
the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except 
a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but 
if it die, it beareth much fruit”. Not that Jesus did not appreciate the 
appearance of this new day-star upon His dark horizon, nor that He did 
not value the wealth of waiting harvests which the day would ripen: He 
simply put them away for the present. Just now He is putting first things 
first; the atonement must be wrought; that conditions everything. That 


* Delivered at the Sixth Conference, held at the Trinity Union Methodist Episcopal Church, 
March 9, 1904. 
224 


THE CROSS THE WORLD'S EVANGEL. 225 


which lay in the Father’s will as something eternally conceived, but now 
historically to be accomplished, was of supreme moment. So Jesus drops 
all other prizes that tempt His imagination, and in one cry of complete 
abandon He breaks forth, ‘‘ Father, glorify Thy name”. It is the most 
consummate self-surrender in all history. 

It is significant that the particular moment when Jesus so gave Him- 
self up to His cross, should have been precisely that at which these Greeks 
came. Up to this time, Christ had magnified His errand as ‘unto the lost 
sheep of the house of Israel”, but now, since its odor is to fill the world, 
the alabaster box which contained the precious nard must be broken. The 
enmity of the Jews was pressing Him up to the Roman cross, but the 
Father’s will working within Him was also constraining Him to His volun- 
tary self-sacrifice. All middle walls of partition, as between Jew and Gen- 
tile, must now be broken down; Christianity must become catholicised. 
Christ’s foot was upon the border of a yielding world; but before He can 
advance an inch He must turn away to die. It was bitter, but it was sav- 
ing, as it was loyal to every moral reality. Such was the occasion. 

Aspects of Sacrifice. ‘We are now brought to the consideration of the 
offering itself, in behalf of the world, which the unique death of Jesus con- 
stituted. It is the law which underlies this death, commonly called ‘“ the 
law of sacrifice”, which we now study. We shall consider this law in two 
aspects :— 

First, as the atoning offering of Christ in behalf of the world, and 
second, as the archetype of Christian self-sacrifice in behalf of others. 


Is 


And first, let us consider that objective offering which Christ made of 
Himself for the redemption of the world. In the expression in v. 24, 
‘‘ Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die”’, all this is implied ; 
but in v. 31 Jesus reiterates the principle in language most unequivocal, as 
setting forth the character and bearing of the death He died. He exclaims, 
““ Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be 
cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto 
myself”. The plain meaning of the two passages just quoted will compel us 
to conclude that the sacrifice of Christ in behalf of the world was a judg- 
ment-death. But before defining in what respects this is so, some prelimi- 
nary considerations are needful, in order to a clear understanding of terms. 

The Scripture-Term Judgment. The meaning of this term ‘“ judgment” 
has been grossly misconceived, and, in consequence, the most unhappy 
revolt against its use exists in the modern mind. By many the term has 
been regarded as synonymous with a sentence of reprobation or damna- 
tion. But this is due to an oversight of certain additional and very differ- 
ent and gracious senses in which the Bible uses the term. The word often 
is employed in the sense of intervention, vindication, albeit it is a vindica- 
tion which has regard, also, to the divine holiness. For example, in the 
fifty-fourth Psalm we find the prayer, ‘‘ Save me, O God; judge me by Thy 


226 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


strength”. The Prophet Jeremiah declares of the coming Redeemer, 
“He shall judge the cause of the poor and needy”. That is, He will 
deliver them from the oppressor, reversing the false position imposed on 
them by their cruel persecutors. Matthew, quoting from Isaiah, says, 
‘* He shall show judgment to the Gentiles * * * the bruised reed shall 
He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench, till He send forth 
judgment unto victory, and in His name shall the Gentiles trust”. What 
could be more tender? It is like the opening of a dove-cote for the ingath- 
ering of heathen souls who are expected to come flying as clouds that they 
may home themselves in God. After Christ’s healing of the man born 
blind, described in the ninth chapter of John, Christ promulgates His 
great law of grace in the expression, ‘‘ For judgment came I into this 
world ’—a new kind of judgment, a judgment according to grace— that 
they which see not may see”’. 

The Moral Acknowledgment in Christs Work, But a second thing 
which needs to be premised, in connection with the law of sacrifice is this: 
that in the work of Christ, the emphasis properly belongs to the moral 
acknowledgment therein made, rather than to the mere pain He bore. 


In some conceptions of the atonement, supposedly most orthodox, too 
large an emphasis has been put upon the sufferings of Christ as such; as if 
the sufferings won the pardon. The old view ofa “limited atonement” 
sprang out of the conviction that in the divine mind there was an exact 
estimate of the amount of suffering required for the sins of a given number 
of the race. That which is sometimes called ‘‘ the commercial view ” of the 
atonement, is objectionable for a similar reason, that a certain amount of 
pain is conceived as an offset to a definite amount of sin. Thus the atone- 
ment would be purely a matter of the exact payment of debt. But this con- 
ception would be incongruous with the necessity of any real pardon. 


When Jesus was upon earth, while indeed He referred at times to the 
depth of His sorrow, yet He did not magnify the mere suffering He was 
called to bear, nor appeal for pity on its account. Even on the way to 
Calvary, when “there followed Him the great multitude of the people, and 
of women who bewailed and lamented Him”, He turned unto them and 
said, ‘‘ Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves 
and for your children’. Jesus would not have any mere compassion. 
Some of the medizval conceptions expressed in portraits of the Christ, rep- 
resenting Him as an object of pity, convey most misleading impressions ; 
they strike one as effeminate, and often as sycophantic. Christ, while the 
greatest of sufferers, was only incidentally such; up to the last moment of 
His heart-break, He was ever actuated by the principles of the highest self- 
respect ; and He always conveyed the impression that with perfect self-com- 
mand He was moving towards the sublimest moral goal. There was some- 
thing unmistakably deeper to be affected by the cross, than the mere sym- 
pathy of mankind. The acknowledgment made in the moral realm, of the 
righteous and yet gracious relations with which Jesus was dealing, was the 
central thing. Says Dr. Godet: ‘‘When Christ gave out His last submis- 


THE CROSS THE WORLD'S EVANGEL. oe 


sive cry upon the cross, it was in one conscience alone that this judgment 
of the world’s sin, the echo of that which God pronounces in heaven, took 
place. But as there is only one rationality in all intelligent minds, so in 
reality there is only one and the same conscience in all moral beings; and 
thus it is that the cry which came from that one perfectly normal conscience, 
is yet to re-echo in all other human consciences”. The most valuable 
thing about the humiliation of Christ, was that He assumed it with unques- 
tioning submission. In the Epistle to the Hebrews it is called ‘the obedi- 
ence’. This was its terminal point; it was the acknowledged propriety 
of it all, that so vindicated God. 

Christ’s offering was thus an answer to something final in God’s uni- 
verse. Dr. P. T. Forsyth, principal of Hackney College, London, who mm 
various recent papers* has thrown great light upon the atonement, has 
pointed out that later theological thought, while amply recognizing the prin- 
ciple of sacrifice,—sacrifice as mere altruism,—has done scant justice to the 
idea of judgment in its far-reaching Biblical sense; a sense which has rela- 
tion to grace as well as law. This conviction is deeply shared by the writer 
of this paper. 

Judgment more Final than Sacrifice. Now, the idea of sacrifice as an 
end is without warrant either in Scripture or reason. At best it can be 
only a means; sacrifice is never an end, except to the ascetics. A man has 
no more right to sacrifice himself in the sense of destroying or injuring 
himself than he has to commit suicide. Whenever, as in monasticism, or in 
the rites of self-oblation which characterize Hinduism, or in self-applied 
legalistic rigors, the pains inflicted are thought to have a value or merit in 
themselves, they are idolatrous rather than Christian; they are morbid and 
always end disastrously. Judgment, however, is a proper end in itself; it 
means the vindication of holiness, of righteousness, even of such righteous- 
ness as embraces in it all that we include in the terms love and grace; and 
beyond such vindication one cannot go; the last standard of appeal has 
been reached. It was to sucha standard that the atonement had refer- 
ence. At the very basis, therefore, of the law of Christian sacrifice lies this 
principle of judgment so needing to be restored to the thought of our day. 
This term “judgment” is only another word for the redeeming realism of 
God’s universe with both a severe and a gracious bearing. When, there- 
fore, we shall shortly say, as we must, that Christ in the work of His cross 
had a supreme reference to principles of judgment, we shall simply mean 
that He was doing justice to all the moral and spiritual situation required 
in His Father’s endeavor to save the world. He was dealing with the 
actual realities in the case—the realities of grace as well as of holiness— 
such realities as the final judgment will disclose. 

Christ's Death a Judgment-Death. We are now prepared, I trust, to 
come to the consideration of Christ’s sacrificial-death as a judgment-death 
in behalf of the world. By the sacrificial-death, we mean something very 


* See Christian World Pulpit, Oct. 1, 1902, and May 20, 1903. 


228 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


different from the tragedy of the crucifixion.* The crucifixion was an 
expression of human sin at its worst, whereas the cross of the atonement 
was the expression of God at His best. The crucifixion was the most 
criminal act in the history of man, whereas the atoning act was the sub- 
limest act in the moral history of God; it was the historical expression of 
that which was voluntary and eternal in God’s character, government and 
practical attitude toward men. This atonement at its base was an invisible 
thing. It dealt with factors like these: with the divine government, the 
divine holiness, the divine love; and all these as related to human sin in its 
inmost essence. In all, then, that Christ was exacting on the divine side, 
He was in some profound way experiencing not merely mortal death, but 
that death which is immeasurably deeper, namely, that spiritual death, that 
separation from God which is the consequence of sin. In this profound 
sense He ‘‘ tasted death for every man”. He was deserted for the hour, © 
that all who believe in Him may be forever received into fellowship with 
the divine. 

It is well known that William Cowper, the poet, passed much of his 
life under clouds of melancholia, and that in his death he morbidly felt 
that he was deserted. On a visit to his grave, Mrs. Browning took up this 
morbid thought of Cowper’s and thus wrote correcting it :— 


“Deserted! God could separate from his own essence rather: 
And Adam’s sins have swept between the righteous Son and Father; 
Yea, once, Immanuel’s orphaned cry His universe hath shaken— 
It went up single, echoless, ‘ My God, I am forsaken !’ 


“It went up from the Holy’s lips amid His lost creation, 
That, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation ; 
That earth’s worst phrensies, marring hope, should mar not hope’s fruition, 
And I, on Cowper’s grave, should see his rapture in a vision!” 


The death of Jesus was intrinsically a judgment-death. Perhaps the 
term ‘‘judgment-death” which we employ, or, to use a broader term, 
‘“‘judgment-infliction ” would be better understood in the light of a concrete 
example. Of course, the judgment-death which Jesus bore was a matter so 
original and unique that no human illustration of it can be adequate. An 
illustration, however, may help. An acquaintance of the writer had a noble 
young son, who, however, on one occasion disobeyed his father and then 
sought to cover disobedience by falsehood. The father, on ascertaining the 
facts, summoned his son and asked him what he thought should be done about 
it. The son replied, “‘you should whip me”. The father assented, and 
took the boy aside to inflict the chastisement; when, however, the father 
came to use the whip his great heart broke and, instead of striking the boy, 
he said, “I cannot think of whipping you; you are a small, delicate boy, 


*Itis indeed true that tie New Testament references to the crucifixion seem, at first sight, to place 
value on the crucifying act. It appears to us, however, that Christ simply adopted that which was intended 
to be the mark of His shame—His execution upon a cross—as the symbol of His moral enthronement secured 
through a deeper dying and its consequent resurrection; and thus ‘‘by the most exalted irony of history,” 
the New Testament represents Christianity as glorying in the cross: glorying not in what criminal men 
intended, but in what God purposed and accomplished on the ground of what He Himself had wrought on the 
divine side of the Calvary enactment. 


THE CROSS THE WORLDS EVANGEL. 229 


and I am a large, strong man. I can better bear the whipping than you”. 
So, removing his own coat, the father bade the boy to lay the whip on his 
own back. The boy struck a blow or two, but becoming overwhelmed 
with grief ran away to his chamber, where he was shortly found begging 
the divine forgiveness. It will be readily believed that such a form of cor- 
rection needed no repetition. Bronson Alcott, the transcendental philoso- 
pher, at one time introduced a similar form of discipline in his boys’ school 
in Boston. For certain transgressions, the master, instead of the pupil, 
was to receive the punishment. The first time it was applied the culprit 
broke down, and the school broke down. So marked was its influence that 
it seemed likely to eventuate in an evangelical revival. Both these forms of 
judgment-infliction referred to, the one in the family and the other in the 
school, in principle are akin to that which under grace is employed in the 
divine government, and for moral power the principle is unequalled. 


On the basis of the judgment-death, or infliction, which God in Christ 
endured, human salvation was made possible. By this we mean that in 
effect certain great judicial results affecting God’s government over men— 
His saving mastery of men—were achieved, results which could have been 
secured in no other way. 


four Objective Achievements of the Atonement. Wename four of these 
results, results which enter into the objective side of the atonement. The 
first result was the acknowledgment, made in Christ’s experience, of the due 
judgment or condemnation which belongs to the collective evil of the race— 
that judgment which the sin-principle merited: ‘‘ Now is the judgment of 
this world”. The second result was the casting out of the self-principle, or 
the false philosophy which characterizes Satan himself, and on which he 
also depends for the subversion of God’s ideals in human life; the fallacious 
world-principle of which Satan is the author, by Christ’s moral attitude up 
to the moment he expired, was set at nought, was judged to its potential 
destruction, as having no rational or moral justification. ‘‘ The prince of 
this world hath been judged”. ‘“ The prince of this world cometh and hath 
nothing in me”. “ Now shall the prince of this world be cast out”. This 
meant the ultimate destruction of Satan himself objectively, as well as in us. 
The power of Christ’s cross achieved it. The third result was this: Christ’s 
death was a judgment-death in the sense that it potentially destroyed the 
nexus whereby sin and spiritual death had been bound together. So now, 
through what Christ effected on His cross, notwithstanding man’s sin, we 
need not spiritually and eternally die. This, of course, works subjectively 
in us, but it was first in principle a historical achievement, and so objective 
also. Christ came “to destroy the works of the devil”. Thus redemption is 
deeper than natural causation. And the fourth result was this: Through 
this judgment-death on the cross, mankind was bought in as a reversionary 
treasure, and so became adjudged to Christ forever as His peculiar posses- 
sion. At all these points the atonement in principle was substitutionary, 
and so really vicarious: it was more than vicarious; it was vicario-vital, 
inasmuch as in the atoning work of Christ it is always implied that its 


230 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


benefits inure to those who are presupposed to become through faith vitally 
one with Christ. 

In all this work of the judgment-death the divine love was peculiarly 
shown. Divine love in the Scriptures, in fact, “‘has no meaning apart from 
the consideration that it took hold of the central situation of man’s sin and 
guilt’. Love dealt with these in grace, instead of according to their strict 
merits. Perhaps we need to pause here, for this needs to be emphasized. 
Nothing in current thought is so misunderstood as the divine love. Divine 
love has a peculiarity: itis utterly unlike any other form of love in the 
world, because it enters into responsibility for human sin and guilt, as the 
moral situation, as the divine grace and the saving work require. Accord- 
ingly, divine love can deal with man in complete holiness, and at the same 
time safeguard his endless future. So it is that Christ shall “bring forth 
judgment unto victory ”’, that judgment becomes the foundation of a system 
of grace. Thus, the salvation of the Gospel isa salvation by judgment 
rather than from it; nothing can go behind it; it is a basis of adjudication, 
a method of settlement in grace and righteousness, of all the claims of the 
holy God upon the fallen sinner. 

Through this fourfold achievement, we understand that the judgment 
enacted by Christ on His cross extended to the deepest realities of the 
moral universe, in this world and the next. In effect, it anticipated every 
essential moral issue that can cause dread to the human soul in anticipation 
of the last day. The penal difficulty with respect to past transgressions has 
been potentially met. Satan, man’s great accuser, his arch enemy, has 
been potentially destroyed. The death doom entailed by sin has been 
potentially cancelled. And we all in the intent of God have been adjudged 
to Christ as His potential possession. We are regarded as Christ’s own, 
ransomed unto Himself, His bride, as dear to Him as the apple of His 
eye. With such results as these in principle accomplished, and personally 
appropriated by the vital faith of the believer, all fear of the last day is cast 
out, so that with confidence we may sing: 


“Bold shall I stand in that great day, 
For who aught t my charge shall lay? 
Fully absolved from these I am, 
From sin and fear, from guilt and shame”. 


That day is to become our coronation day, a day in which Christ Him- 
self has vastly more at stake than have we. Thus in the profoundest sense 
Christ’s judgment-death was an anticipation of all possible expressions of 
judgment in the future; and it becomes for all men the touchstone of 
character and destiny. 

I; 

The Secondary Form of the Law of Sacrifice. We now pass to that 
secondary form of the law of sacrifice, which springs out of the primary 
one we have just considered, and is conformable to it; that self-sacrifice in 
behalf of others which the followers of Christ are to exhibit. As for their 
Lord, so for them, “‘ except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, 


THE CROSS THE WORLD'S EVANGEL. 231 


it abideth alone”. Not that any portion of the disciples’ suffering was 
needed to complete the atonement. That, as a finished work, stands ever 
by itself, albeit it has implications which involve the disciple. We are to 
“fill up on our part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in our 
flesh for His body’s sake”’. 


This occasion of the visit of the Greeks, and the utterances it evoked 
from Christ, is one of three momentous hours in His career, in which He 
was authenticated by an audible voice spoken by the Father right out of the 
blue. The first occasion was at the baptism; the second was at the trans- 
figuration ; and the third was this occasion when the Greeks came. There 
is something common to the teaching of each of these outstanding hours ; 
and that common teaching is fundamental. It concerns Christ’s coming 
death and resurrection. These two things are really twin parts of one indi- 
visible fact, the consummated atonement. For in the Scriptures the cross 
always eventuates in the resurrection, and the resurrection always presup- 
poses the atonement. The resurrection is not conceived as a mere survival 
of a Jesus who was slain, but rather as the affixing of heaven’s seal to the 
validity and value of the judgment-death endured. It was ‘‘not possible 
that He should be holden of death”, because through His supernatural 
judgment-death, He had destroyed him that had the power of natural death, 
that is, the devil. At the Jordan, on the mount, and at the coming of the 
Greeks, Christ was striking the keynote of His complete gospel, namely, 
this law of sacrifice,—the one only law which the Father emphasized with a 
voice, nay with a thrice repeated voice, from the eternities ;—He could not 
withhold this emphatic approval when Jesus His Son was accepting His 
own unique dying and living again as central to all His mission. 


At the baptism, the approval concerned Christ’s official perfecting as 
the last Adam; on the mount the voice concerned the message essential to 
be preached, if demons were to be cast out and mankind transformed into 
divine Sonship; the message of ‘‘ His decease ’’, or ‘“‘ exodus ”—that trium- 
phant passage of the Red Sea of His judgment-death—‘‘ which He was to 
accomplish at Jerusalem ;”’ while the voice on this third occasion accentua- 
ted the only principle on which Christ’s successors could gain power for 
their world-wide task, namely, the principle of sacrificial love. As Christ 
had gained His authority to redeem through His cross, so the disciple would 
gain His power to impress the salvation in that cross through a similarly 
surrendered life, and the spiritual quickening which would follow it. Hence 
those words in vs. 25 and 26: ‘‘ He that loveth his life loseth it; and he 
that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man 
serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am there shall also My servant 
be: if any man serve Me, him will the Father honor”. 

But here again we need to be on our guard in interpreting the law of 
sacrifice, that we do not fall into ascetic error. As with Christ, the emphasis 
was primarily upon the acknowledgment made by His conscience rather 
than the pain He bore, so in the life of the disciple, the acknowledgment 
of the moral claim in love, whatever its cost to self-gratification, is the main 


232 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


thing. The moment one imagines, in a line of missionary service, for 
example, that he is performing some excess of devotion, some work of super- 
erogation, or acquiring merit with God, he is false to Christ’s law. The 
highest form of self-abnegation, even of martyrdom, ever expressed by the 
most heroic devotee, whether in a Francis of Assisi, or in a Paton of the 
New Hebrides, is at its best only the manifestation of an elementary relation 
to Christ. In this realm, heroics are wholly out of the question. 


Why the Necessity of Sacrifice at all. But some one will ask, where is 
the moral necessity for this law of sacrifice? This law is really the deepest 
paradox in Christianity. The necessity for it lies in the fact of sin. Upon 
the foreseen certainty that sin would come into the world, God saw it could 
be overcome in no other way than through a great judgment-death on the 
part of His Son, and through a new habit of life engendered in His people, 
conformable to that death. If there were no sin, it would be unnecessary 
in the moral realm for the ‘‘grain of wheat to fall into the earth and die”’. 
Angels follow no such law; unfallen beings would not need to. But “as 
through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin”, so 
through death, in another form, the havoc sin had wrought was undone, 
“that through death He might bring to nought him that had the power 
of death”. Through obedience to this law by the Spirit, the sin-principle, 
the self-centered principle of being which Satan brought in receives its death 
blow, and evil is progressively overcome and eliminated in so far as place is 
given to the working of the higher law of vicarious love. 

Sin, how Expiated? It is in these deep two-fold senses,—through the 
work of Christ objectively on the cross, and subjectively in the believer,— 
that sin is expiated ; it is potentially destroyed. The moral difficulty with 
which God in Christ was dealing in His law of sacrifice, was that of estab- 
lishing a consistent method of bestowing pardon on the sinner, and at the 
same time of creating within him a loathing of his sin. Be it observed that 
this is not expiation in any pagan sense of that term; it should never be 
confounded with it. It had no reference to God’s disposition as if that 
needed to be placated or appeased ; it had reference to the moral necessities 
of the case. Had there been no proper regard for these, the moral’sense of 
mankind, quite apart from what was demanded by God, could not have 
been satisfied. To have forgiven sin without such a work as was wrought 
by Christ upon His cross would have legitimized it. But now, since in 
connection with this objective achievement of Christ’s atonement, a new 
energy by the Spirit of God also works within the soul, a positive righteous- 
ness establishes itself upon the neck of sin and in the end will overcome 
and destroy it. 


Of course the death principle for the believer in this law of sacrifice or 
expiation above referred to is itself also a deep paradox, because it is a 
unique form of death, a death which in Christ’s case was a judgment-death, 
but which in the disciple’s case is a regenerating death. This issues not in 
self-destruction but in self-recovery through the spiritual resurrection which 
accompanies it. Death thus becomes a process not of burial in order to 


vee) 


THE CROSS THE WORLDS EVANGEL. 233 


decay, but of planting in order to harvest. We bury dead refuse; we plant 
living germs; that which perishes is the mere husk, the outside wrappings ; 
this sets free the springing principle of higher, even divine life. Through 
the transformation in this law of sacrifice, we realize a productiveness alto- 
gether transcending any processes of mere self-preservation. It is at this 
point that a new spontaneity of righteousness is begotten by the Spirit of 
God, so that in the loyalty of its Redeemer. the ransomed and renewed soul 
avows new fealty to God as expressed in the psalm, ‘‘Lo, I come to do Thy 
will, O God”. A dying which thus results is not a waste, but is the highest 
economic recuperative force in the moral universe. A soul thus recovered, 
has a safeguard also against a second fall which the first Adam never knew. 
Moreover, through the operation of this law issues the potency of the new 
heavens and new earth having for their capital the new Jerusalem. 


Relation of the Atonement to World-Evangelization. But we cannot leave 
this law of sacrifice without accentuating its intended application, as Christ 
Himself did to the matter of world-evangelization. Our Lord having uttered 
His homily concerning the secondary expression of His principle of sacrifice 
thus soliloquizes: ‘‘ Nowis My soul troubled and what shall Isay? Father, 
save me from this hour?”” This would have been the natural thing to ask 
but for the problem of sin. The sin problem, however, cannot be ignored. 
Accordingly, Jesus instantly adds, ‘‘ But for this cause came I unto this 
hour’. This was the distinctive goal for which ‘‘ the Word became flesh and 
dwelt among us”. Then in a passion of absolute loyalty to the divine 
purpose, Jesus throws Himself into the prayer, ‘‘ Father, glorify Thy 
name’. It was at that moment that ‘“‘there came a voice out of heaven, 
saying, ‘I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again’”’. This meant not 
merely that the Father would glorify Himself in the resurrection of Christ 
to follow, but it implied also, as we think, that in the new epoch of Gentile 
evangelization into which Christ’s successors would be brought, the divine 
name would be further glorified through them. And as if to put beyond all 
doubt what was intended by this miraculous utterance, Jesus made the 
decisive comment, ‘“‘ This voice hath not come for My sake, but for your 
sakes’’; and if for their sakes, the Saviour implied that God the Father was 
putting upon them the work of continuing Christ’s expression of vicarious 
love for a lost world. 

Once then, of the three times in which the audible voice came forth from 
the Father right out of heaven, it came for the benefit of those who were to 
build upon the foundation of Christ in the work of evangelizing the nations. 
Precisely the same emphasis which was afforded to Jesus Himself at the 
Jordan, and to the gospel message on the transfiguration mount was now 
given to the principle of their missionary task. This voice was the Father’s 
accent upon that task. Moreover, it was to be conceived by those who 
apprehend it as perpetually reiterating itself till the end of the dispensation. 

The Father’s Accent. We justly magnify the great commission of the 
Son, uttered just prior to His ascension. We habitually dwell upon the 
commission of the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost—upon the import of that 


234 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


day with the descending breath, the heavenly fire and the supernatural 
tongues, empowering the church for high execution, and we do well. But 
there is a commission of the Father—the first person of the Holy Trinity, 
also—uttered direct from heaven on the significant day we are now contem- 
plating, which comes to us with the emphasis of the first person of the 
Godhead. This commission was intended, not for Christ, but for the 
disciples who stood about Him, and for their successors, and for theirs, and 
for theirs, repeating itself right on through each generation up to our own; 
and through us to be passed on to all our successors until the work shall be 
finished and the kingdom shall have fully come. And yet multitudes among 
us in the modern church seem never to have heard this all-commanding 
voice at all. Some who heard those august tones said that ‘it thundered ”’. 
Sometimes in the summer time when the conditions have favored, we have 
been in the midst of an electric storm, the concussions of which became 
continuous. A peal breaking from one part of the heavens rolled into 
another arising from a different quarter, and that melted into one imme- 
diately above our heads, which again reverberated to all the surrounding 
points of the compass; this woke yet other sounds, until really for hours 
there was one long roll like the reveille of the eternities. So it seems to us 
in the thought of this climacteric teaching of the third day of our Lord’s 
passion, God would be understood as sounding through the heavens above 
our heads a long continuous thunder call summoning His followers of all 
times and places to universal cooperation with His glorified Son in the work 
of the world’s salvation. That voice has never ceased to sound since our 
Lord passed it on to His church. 


Bearing of this on Missions. The work involved in the sublime com- 
mission growing out of the law of sacrifice in a few brief sentences is this. 
To give to the heathen world the benefit of the anticipatory judgment set up 
in the cross of Christ to prepare them for the final judgment of the last day. 
It was for this that the great judgment-death on Calvary was enacted and 
promulgated,—that every last moral issue that can arise in the last assize, 
might be met and settled in advance. Without the knowledge of that 
judgment enacted on the cross the heathen are shut up to that poor blurred 
judgment which exists in their own fallen natural consciences. That indeed 
God will not despise, ‘‘in the day when He shall judge the secrets of men 
by Jesus Christ”. But this is utterly inadequate; it lacks dynamic. It 
affords no certainty of salvation to the heathen who universally live under 
the torture of their guilty and superstitious fears; it has little educative and 
transforming power. At the best it can only afford a low form of embryonic 
salvation, infantile in character. It certainly can furnish no such full and 
glorious salvation as God has prepared for everybody in Christ’s cross. 
It is the denial of the benefit of this anticipatory judgment in Christ’s cross 
through long ages to the heathen world that is their spiritual poverty and 
the church’s crime. Evangelical Christians—a few of them—have entered 
upon work for the heathen to the degree they have, because to some extent 
they perceive the force and value of Christ’s judgment-death as related to 


THE CROSS THE WORLDS EVANGEL. 235 


human destiny. Like Paul, they know that that death has potentially 
changed the moral status, the divine possibilities in grace for all mankind. 
Hence they are zealous to render actual the potential in the real experience 
of the heathen. It is this that creates the evangelical motive for missions. 
This it is also which raises the obligation to evangelize the heathen to an 
entirely distinctive plane. It is the obligation to give being to the church 
among peoples to whom as yet it is impossible. 

To us, therefore, who through Christ have received mercy, God looks to 
extend that mercy to every groping pagan mind. To the degree that we 
also in the performance of that task die with Him and rise again to newness 
of life and service on the whole world-wide field, will the church become 
possessed with power to transform the earth. 


* THE ATTRACTING POWER OF THE CROSS. 
(St. JOHN 12: 32.) 
BY REV. AVERY A. SHAW, 


PASTOR OF THE BAPTIST CHURCH IN BROOKLINE, MASS. 


We are all familiar with the three possible ways of reading the Bible: 
to read into it what we wish it to mean, to read out of it what we do not 
wish it to mean, or to let it say what it evidently does mean. No doubt we 
have found it much easier to read the Bible in either or both the former 
ways than in the third. It is especially hard for us to rid our minds of 
prepossessions in the subject now before us. To the great multitude of 
devout believers, this chapter is the watershed of John’s Gospel, as the 
thought of the 32nd verse is the watershed of human history. In the minds of 
many, however, possibly of some here today, an exception will be taken to 
using the words of the subject assigned to me as an interpretation of the text 
before us. It will be objected by some that Jesus did not refer to His death 
at all but to His exaltation, John’s interpretation being more or less of an 
impertinence. Others, while admitting that Jesus here refers to His death, 
would hold that He in no sense thinks of it as being the power of attraction. 
His death was a necessary incident to His heavenly exaltation, but it is the 
exaltation that attracts. So, for the present, let us lay aside the subject as 
stated, and, so far as possible dispossessing our minds of bias of all kinds 
except a bias toward the truth, let us try to discover our Lord’s meaning in 
these words: ‘And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men 
unto Myself’. On the face of these words is our Lord’s evident desire to 
draw all men to Himself. This will take place He declares if He “be lifted 
up from the earth”. 

John interprets these words as follows: ‘Now this He said signifying 
by what manner of death He should die’’, an interpretation that in many 
quarters istreated with scant courtesy. It is difficult for the ordinary reader 


to understand why John may not be as well qualified to interpret the words ° 


of Christ correctly as any one in a later age. But without entering into this 
controversy, let us see if there is any light we may discover for ourselves. 

Twice before, as recorded by John, Jesus used this same expression 
concerning Himself, with the omission in each case of the words “‘ from ”’ or 
“out of the earth’. To Nicodemus (3: 14) He said: ‘‘And as Moses 
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be 
lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him may have eternal life”. In John 
8:28 He said to the unbelieving and hostile Jews: ‘‘ When ye have lifted 
up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that Iam He”. 


* Delivered at the Fifth Conference, held at the Central Baptist Church, February 10, 1904. 


236 


THE ATTRACTING POWER OF THE CROSS. 237 


The word Azfpsoois used literally of place and means “to lift up”’, “to 
lift up on high”, and so comes to mean “to exalt”’, “‘to raise to eminence”’. 
From the reference in the first quotation to the pole on which the brazen 
serpent was hung, from the fact that the unbelieving Jews did lift up Jesus 
upon the Cross, and thus fulfil literally the prophecy of the second reference, 
and remembering that the literal meaning of the word refers to place, it ought 
not to be considered a sign of unwarranted bias to accept at its face value 
John’s interpretation of the third use of the expression. That the words 
“from” or “out of the earth” would totally change the significance of the 
word, making it refer only to the heavenly exaltation, would seem unwar- 
ranted, unless the whole tenor of the passage positively demanded it. That 
it may give to the passage a double significance so that it includes the death 
on the Cross and the exaltation to the Father’s right hand is quite open to 
belief. 

To understand this verse clearly, however, we must take our stand with 
Jesus and, if possible, face the situation from His point of view. The great 
confession had been made; and immediately after this Jesus had told the 
disciples that He must go up to Jerusalem to suffer many things of the 
Chief Priests, the Elders and the Scribes, and be put to death, and the 
third day rise again. Three times over with solemn emphasis is this 
repeated. When the natural supposition would be that He would stay away 
from Jerusalem where His claims were derided or ignored and remain in 
Galilee among friends, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. At 
this time there was no hostility that He could not, if He wished, have 
easily escaped. But He insists that He has a mission to fulfil. He 
evidently sees in the shame and death the purpose for which He came. 
He entered Jerusalem by His own deliberate choice in such a manner as to 
draw the attention of the multitudes to His Messianic claims. He receives 
with apparent satisfaction the plaudits of the multitudes and the hosannas 
of the children. 

And now some Greeks, evidently proselytes, though of pagan birth, 
had requested to be introduced to Him. At their request we hear Him 
say, ‘‘ The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified”. Fre- 
quently during His ministry He had said (or it had been said of Him) 
‘Mine hour is not yet come”. Now He sees that hour at hand. It is an 
hour when He is to be glorified; yet it is an hour so filled with darkness 
and horror that we hear Him saying, ‘‘ Now is my soul troubled and what 
shall I say”. ‘‘ Father save me from this hour’. Light is given us here 
from the parable of the wheat. ‘Except a grain of wheat fall into the 
ground and die, it abideth by itself alone, but if it die, it beareth much 
fruit”. The very reason of the existence of the wheat is that it may die and 
in dying reproduce itself. Its life is of value only as it dies, and is to be 
interpreted only through its death. The hour then is the hour of Glory, 
but of a Glory that is inseparable from shame and death and the horror of 
great darkness more bitter than death. In the request of the Greeks, He 
sees the waving grain ripe for the harvest, but He sees that before the 


238 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


harvest, if He would live and give enduring life to others He must first 
apply to Himself the law of the wheat and die. His first vision is that of 
Glory. Then the picture dissolves into a picture of the blackness of death 
incomparably terrible, and His soul shrinks for a moment, but presently the 
vision changes to that of a redeemed world, and in the center of it is the 
Cross reflecting the halo of eternal glory which it creates. 

One other point gives further light. If the Cross is to be His triumph, 
then it must be the final defeat of him, who through it, aimed his last and 
deadliest blow at the sacred head. ‘‘The prince of this world” shall be 
overcome and cast out from the place of power he has usurped over the 
lives of men. The blow aimed at the head of the Son of Man will rebound 
upon his own head to his final and complete undoing. Like the serpent 
that so firmly fastens its fangs in its victim that it cannot withdraw them 
till all their venom is exhausted, and its victim is not only too strong to be 
overcome, but rather crushes the serpent’s head; so Satan will exhaust his 
power to hurt, and, unable to overthrow the Son of Man, will be himself 
defeated and dethroned. ‘And /, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto 
Me”. And I, victor just where I will be thought to be vanquished ; I lifted 
up upon the Cross as upon a throne of triumph, will draw all men unto 
Myself. It isnot at all necessary to exclude the Resurrection and Ascen- 
sion. They are integral parts of the one transaction without which the 
death would be an ignominious defeat. The essential point here, however, 
is that Christ speaks of His death not as a painful incident in the course of 
His high calling, but as the very fulfilling of His mission ; not as a shameful 
trial to be undergone before He can attain His Glory and win men to Him- 
self, but as the means of His glorification, reflecting the Glory it accom- 
plishes, and itself drawing men to Himself. 

If now it has become plain that John has interpreted Christ correctly 
in this verse, we may go on to discover what are the essential elements in 
this lifting up that constitute it so great a power over men. 

Without going at length into the apostolic interpretation of Christ’s 
death, which would be beside our purpose, let us simply note in passing, 
that in Paul and Peter and in the Epistle to the Hebrews, with such 
variations as differences in writer and purpose and destination would justify, 
we have a unanimous interpretation of Christ’s death as a vicarious .sacri- 
fice, related to God’s love, but also made necessary on account of sin and 
itself the condition of man’s forgiveness. They declare that Christ delib- 
erately laid down His life. That this course was necessary. That its need 
lay in man’s sin. Paul differs from the others in carrying the question one 
step further back in its logical course and relating it to God’s righteousness, 
which is that attribute in God which takes cognizance of sin. ‘‘That He 
might be just and the justifier”’. 

It has been claimed that in John there is an entirely different concep- 
tion. That here we have Redemption through Revelation, not Revelation 
through Redemption. It is true, as Dr. Geo. B. Stevens expresses it, ‘‘ That 
John dwells less than most of the New Testament writers upon the legal 


THE ATTRACTING POWER OF THE CROSS. 239 


aspects of the divine nature, but there are not wanting evidences that the con- 
ception of the divine love which underlies all his religious ideas includes the 
idea of righteousness, that self-respecting attribute of God which occasions 
His holy displeasure at sin, and requires it to be expressed and vindicated 
while sin is forgiven’”’. When John speaks of the Lamb of God, he is speak- 
ing of a sacrificial lamb. He speaks of Christ as the “‘ propitiation for our 
sins”. True, he does not enter into controversy over this point. He speaks 
as though this were commonly understood and accepted as fundamental. 
In the Gospel he is less concerned with the method by which salvation comes 
than by its actual realization. But we are assured that this apostolic inter- 
pretation was largely dogmatic, reflecting the mental characteristics and 
training of the Apostles and the exigencies of the times. It was, we are 
told, an apologetic designed to meet the reproach of the Jew, to whom the 
Cross was a stumbling block, and of the Greek, to whom it was foolishness, 
rather than a fair interpretation of the teaching of their Lord. 

The question resolves itself into this: Did Paul entirely misunder- 
stand, and so misrepresent, the meaning of the death of Jesus, and did the 
other Apostles “‘ paulinize”’, or have they all alike sat at the feet of Jesus? 
We know what they said, ‘‘ That which we have seen and heard and our 
hands have handled declare we unto you”. “I delivered unto you first of 
all that which I also received’’. ‘‘And we are witnesses of these things”. 
It seems to the plain man quite impossible to walk with Jesus as 
His steps are traced by the Synoptists, from His baptism where 
He accepts His mission, into the wilderness where He is tempted to 
exchange it for an easier and less worthy one, or at least to use unspiritual 
means to fulfil it; to hear His prophecy of the bridegroom being suddenly 
snatched away in the midst of the festivities (Mt. 9:14) to catch His hint 
in reference to Jonah; and then to follow Him, as we have already done, 
from Czesarea Philippi to Jerusalem to hear Him say that He gave His life 
aransom for many; to go with Him to the upper room, where in memo 
rable words He relates His death to the founding of the new covenant 
sealed by His sacrificial blood; to watch with Him in Gethsemane and to 
stand beneath His Cross until we hear Him cry, “It is finished ”’,—I say it 
is quite impossible for the plain man thus to follow Him through His life 
and be content with any interpretation of that death short of the Apostolic. 

In John’s Gospel we find Christ represented, as in the synoptics, as 
early in His ministry revealing His consciousness that His mission on earth 
was to die formen. To the Jews in the temple He said (2: 19): ‘‘ Destroy 
this temple and in three days I will raise it again”. And I have no dispo- 
sition to sneer at John when he interprets these words as referring to 
Christ’s death. To Nicodemus He said (3:14): ‘‘ As Moses lifted up the 
serpent in the wilderness, even so mustthe Son of Man belifted up”. After 
the feeding of the five thousand, we have in chapter 6 His long discussion 
concerning His flesh and blood, where His sacrificial death is the very heart 
of the passage. In 8:28 we read: ‘When ye have lifted up the Son of 
Man, then ye shall know that lam He”. In1o0:11,17. 18, He is “the good 


240 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


shepherd who giveth his life for the sheep”. John strongly emphasizes the 
malignity of the Jews which caused Christ’s death.* Yet at the same time 
he records Christ’s repeated words: ‘‘ No man taketh it from Me; I lay it 
down of Myself; I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to 
take it again”’. 

A common method of discrediting the strength of Jesus’ testimony to 
Himself is to take each separate passage often apart from its connection, 
and reducing it to its smallest conceivable meaning, to declare “ This is all 
that Jesus meant”. ‘‘ But,’ as Stalker puts it, ‘it is not often the natural 
meaning, and one gets tired of this perpetual shallowing of everything Jesus 
said’’,} What reason is there for thinking that the most superficial sense 
of protound words is most nearly true? Why should we assign to the words 
only that possible meaning that divests them of all their original associa- 
tions? There may be single passages where the meaning is so nicely bal- 
anced, that a slight bias of mind will turn the scales. But when we see the 
scales tipped in a single direction in every case, however weighty the words 
may be on the other side, and this always in the direction of divesting those 
words of all their deepest meaning, we may be pardoned for a suspicion that 
the scales are loaded. 

But now leaving the general significance of our Lord’s death, let us ask 
what it is in particular that constitutes the Cross of Christ so mighty a power 
over men? In the first place I would say, the Cross is the supreme revela- 
tion of God’s love to men. ‘God so loved the world that He gave His Only 
Begotten Son ”’ is our Lord’s explanation of the motive prompting the sacri- 
fice. Men spare those they love; they seek to shield them from harm. 
Fathers and mothers seek to shield their children from the chilly winds and 
biting frosts of life. God “spared not” His Son, but freely gave Him, 
because He loved the world. It is an exhibition of Christ’s love. Volun- 
tarily and gladly He laid down His life for the sheep. Because He had a 
mind of love toward men, “ He did not insist on retaining His equality 
with God”’, but freely humbled Himself even to the death of the Cross. 
Though He was rich, yet for the sake of men whom He loved better than 
His riches, He beggared Himself, pouring out His soul unto death. Here 
in the Cross we see the aching heart of God laid bare. Here we see the 
very throbbing of His love. 

The parable of the Prodigal Son is a graphic and beautiful picture of 
God’s love painted in colors drawn from human life. The Cross is the final 
proof of God’s love set forth in overwhelming reality. No mere picture of 
love, even when painted by the Master Artist Himself can ever satisfy the 
heart of man. But for the man who has the love proven to him by the 
Cross, the picture is of inestimable value ‘“‘ Lest we forget”. We do not 
know love in its length and breadth and height and depth until we see it 
making cost to itself. For this reason the parable of the Prodigal cannot be 
taken as an epitome of the Gospel, for although it beautifully portrays the 


*(5: 18; 7: 19-30; 8: 57-40; 10: 31, 32; II: 50.) 


+ The Christology of Jesus, p. rar. 


THE ATTRACTING POWER OF THE CROSS. 241 


freeness and fulness of God’s love, it is absolutely silent as to its depth and 
cost. No words however fair and strong could ever tell the cost to God of 
expressing His redeeming love. And let us remember that as Dr. Denny 
has so well said: ‘‘Ifthere is no atonement in it, neither is there any Christ 
init”. Ifthat parable is an epitome of the Gospel, then as Harnack has 
affirmed, “ Christ has no placein the Gospel He proclaims”. But we know 
that this parable is a beautiful picture whose interpretation is the Cross. 
The only light in which it can be properly seen is the light that radiates 
from the Cross. The Cross alone gives it proper perspective. 

It was this amazing love that mastered the apostles and inspired them. 
They never felt that they could take salvation for granted. To them salva- 
tion was a miracle of miracles, the wonder of which never ceased. A gospel 
which could be taken for granted would be for them no gospel. But here 
was the infinite and holy God sending His only-begotten Son into the world 
to save them. Here was their loved Master, Whom now they see to have 
been from eternity, the Creator of all things, sharing their earthly lot, and 
freely laying down His life for them. This amazing love of their living 
Lord they cannot ever hope fully to comprehend. . It overpowers them and 
binds them to Him by ties stronger than death. 

Perhaps some of you will remember the story of the two street arabs, 
Rag and Dan, whom Mrs. Mason received into her class in the Mission 
Sunday school. They were well versed in the life and language of the 
slums, but knew as little as a Hotientot about the Bible and the love of 
God. One Sunday afternoon the lesson was on the sufferings of Jesus for 
the sinsof men. Very tenderly Mrs. Mason told them of His patience 
under persecution, and His quiet yielding of Himself to the power of His 
enemies, who were plotting to kill Him. ‘Don’t believe it,” came sud- 
denly from Rag. A painful and yet delicious thrill shot through the 
class. But the teacher went over the story again, patiently and tenderly, 
only to meet another even more uncompromising denial. ‘‘ Now look-a- 
here! Me ’n’ Dan don’t believe no such thing as that. It’s a fake, 
that’s wot it is. *Tain’t accordin’ to reason for anybody to act that way. 
You go down on Fourth street, and you hit a feller over the head, and 
he’ll give you one back, he will for sure, if he’s big enough. But you 
say this Man you're talkin’ about could do anything He wanted to; and 
yet He let them galoots around Him get Him into a corner, and do Him 
up! Well, I guess not!’’ and the worldly wise young cynic smiled a know- 
ing smile—the smile of one who isn’t taken in by children’s stories; while 
his pal nodded his head in acquiescence, and echoed, ‘‘ Not much!” 

Mrs. Mason was driven back as never before to the foundations of her 
faith ; and for the next few months her heart went into her work and out to 
her boys, her two pagans especially, as never before, until one blessed day, 
as the story goes, Rag said, looking her steadily in the eye: 

“Ts this all straight, teacher? Are you sure that you ain’t givin’ us no 
bluff?” 


And looking him as steadily in the face she answered, in his own dialect: 


242 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


“ Yes, Rag, I’m sure. It’s no bluff, it’s straight”. 

For a moment the boy sat in thoughtful silence. Then he said: 

“Wot d’you think of it, Dan?” 

And for once little Dan spoke out for himself, without waiting for his 
cue from his leader: 

“T tell you, Rag, it’s straight goods, just as she says. She’s never went 
back on us yet, an’ you bet she ain’t going back on us now. I believe it”. 

And Rag said slowly, with the look of one who sees the dawning of 
light: 

“Yes, I guess it must be straight. Put, say, if He done all that for a 
fellow, how a fellow ought to love Him!” 

And the woman who had helped him, and whom he had no less helped, 
placed her hand on his, and said through her falling tears: 

“Yes, Rag; and O, I do so want you to love Him!” 

And, still thoughtfully, the lad replied: 

“T don’t see how I’m goin’ to help it”. 

The loyal Dan echoed, “‘ Neither do I”. 

For many, this may be all that is needed in explanation of the Cross to 
constitute it the mighty attracting and regulatirg power in their lives. For 
most people, however, there must be further explanation. : 

Love, to be convincing and commanding, must be no mere display 
irrelevant to our need; it must relate itself to our peculiar circumstances. 
If I am standing by the rapids of Niagara, above the falls, and my friend 
stands by me protesting his love, and to prove it plunges into the rapids 
and is swept over the falls to his death, I am impressed only with the pity 
and the folly of it. But, if I amin the rapids struggling for my life, my 
strength almost gone, and just at the awful brink, and my friend plunges in, 
and, at the cost of his own life, rescues me from death, then I know the 
meaning and reality of his love. It was a love that proved itself by meeting 
my need, by taking my place at the utmost cost to itself. 

The very essence of the attracting power of Christ’s Cross is that it 
meets my deepest need. By it He takes my place. ‘“‘I am the good 
shepherd”, He said; ‘“‘The good shepherd layeth down his life for the 
sheep”’, and the plain man reading that, has seen it to mean that the 
shepherd dies to save the sheep from dying. And applying it to Christ has 
seen that He took the sinner’s place and rescued Him from eternal death. 
The sinner was not only under the power and the stain of sin, but under its 
penalty and doom. Christ, though without the stain of sin, yielded Himself 
to its power and bore its doom, that the sinner might escape. ‘He died 
for me” was Paul’s constant wonder and joy. ‘‘The love of Christ con- 
straineth me, because we thus judge that one died for all”. This reveals 
the inspiration of His life of marvelous devotion and sacrifice. 

You recall Bunyon’s pilgrim as he climbed the hill bounded on either 
side by the walls of salvation, weighed down with the heavy burden on his 
back. ‘Upon that place stood a Cross, and a little below in a hollow a 
sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the 


THE ATTRACTING POWER OF THE CROSS. 243 


Cross his burden loosed from off his shoulders and fell from off his back, 
and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of 
the sepulchre, where it fell in and I saw itno more. Then was Christian 
glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, ‘He hath given me rest by - 
His sorrows, and life by His death !’” 

The reason why this exhibition of God’s love, God taking upon Himself 
our ill desert, and at infinite cost to Himself making it possible to forgive 
us freely, is so marvelous an attracting power is that it starts at the right 
place by begetting repentance in the human heart. When we are brought to 
see, in the crucifixion of the Holy One, what awful work sin can do, that 
He died not for His sin but for ours; if that does not break the heart and 
stir the conscience to commanding action and bring the will into subjection, 
nothing can. This moral revolution there must be in order to make the 
attraction permanent. It is not enough that the prince of this world be 
formally judged and cast out. Not enough that his reign over the hearts of 
men should be externally and artificially broken. There must be generated 
in the hearts of those who rendered him allegiance a deep-seated hatred of 
his reign, and a bitter repentance for allowing him any place in the heart, 
then there can be attraction and allegiance to the new Saviour King. 


“ He hangs a dead corpse on the tree, 
Who made the whole world’s life to spring: 
And, as some outcast, shameful thing 
The Lord of all we see. 


“ Darkness falls thick to shroud the time: 
Nature herself breaks up, and cries: 
Even from the grave shocked ghosts arise, 
At this tremendous crime. 


“Speak not: no human voice may tell 
The secrets which these hours enfold: 
By treacherous hands to traitors sold, 
God yields Himself to Hell. 


“ Speak not, draw close: through stricken heart 
Dnink in the sense of all that’s here: 
The shame, the cross, the nails, the spear, 
Rending His soul apart. 


“ Ah! and far crueller, far, than they, 
(Tools and mere symbols these) our sin! 
Breathe to thyself, soul, deep within 
‘“°Twas I that caused this day’. 


“Speak not: He speaks not: no reproach 
Falls from those dying lips on thee: 
No vengeance, muttering ills to be, 
Bars thy devout approach. 


“ Stricken, unmurmuring, dead, divine, 
This day He hangs, as He hung of old; 
Only the dire‘sight cries ‘ Behold! 
Was ever love like mine?’” 


244 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


And this is the interpretation the history of Christian experience puts 
upon the Cross. 

““Is He a Redeemer or a mere dreamer, preaching a kingdom that can- 
not come?” Ask history. It is not as a hero that the world has thought 
of Christ. On a little hill outside a city wall, between two other crosses, a 
young man hung upon a Cross, all three dying a shameful death. A few 
weeping friends were gathered about the Cross of the young man. A little 
later they bear the body away and put it in the tomb, and the stone is rolled 
against the door, and life and hope and joy are shut in, and darkness and 
despair reign without. It is a mournful dirge we hear rising from the 
broken hearts of the few friends and followers. But listen! Presently you 
catch another note. The same voices, still few in number, but how differ- 
ent the song! You hear it spreading like a grand hymn in a mighty out- 
door congregation. In Samaria and in Galilee the strain is taken up. It 
spreads to Antioch, to Asia Minor. It leaps the Hellespont. It is taken 
up in Macedonia, in Greece, in Rome. It becomes the national anthem of 
the Roman Empire, its echoes reverberating around the Mediterranean. 
But such narrow limits cannot confine this song. It is borne on the wings 
of the wind across the channel, across the Atlantic, until America takes up 
the strain. Back it floats to Africa, to India, to China, to the uttermost 
parts of the earth, until today a mighty chorus from every tribe and tongue 
joins in the one harmonious song of triumph. And what is this marvellous 
song? None other than that which John heard on Patmos when he had a 
vision of a redeemed world joining with the heavenly hosts. ‘‘ Worthy is 
the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power and riches and wisdom 
and might and honor and glory and blessing”. 

As nothing else in the world’s history has done it, the Cross has domi- 
nated the minds of men of all nationalities, of all classes and conditions, by 
drawing them into the fellowship of Jesus Christ. It has transformed relig- 
ion from that dead and barren thing it was into the living and fruitful 
thing we see it today. It has transformed society. It has produced civili- 
zation. It has inspired literature and art to their highest uses. Never are 
men so nearly at their best in any of the works or walks of life as when the 
Cross is their theme and inspiration. We must not ask those who have 
looked upon the Cross only from without, as one might look from without 
on the storied windows of a cathedral, and complain at the dulness and 
flatness of the picture because he had not seen them glorified by the light 
of heaven streaming through them; but let us ask those who have been 
redeemed, from whose minds the image of the Redeemer departed not, who 
are sharers in His joys and in His sufferings; ask these, and their verdict 
will be that He was no dreamer, preaching a kingdom that could not come. 
He is the world’s Redeemer, and because He is its Redeemer, He is build- 
ing up a kingdom that shall have no end. 

But this attracting power is purely moral and therefore is not irresist- 
able. “I will draw all men unto Myself”, Christ said, using a word that 
speaks of inner constraint, not of outward compulsion. An Alexander, a 


THE ATTRACTING POWER OF THE CROSS. 245 


Czsar, a Napoleon, or a Nicholas may dream of a world-empire, but the 
mailed fist is their highest conception of the unifying principal of their 
kingdom. But into the Kingdom of Heaven men are to be drawn by 
sweet persuasion, not “dragged in” against their wills. No outward con- 
straint could be effective. That the attracting power of the Cross is not 
irresistable was never more manifest than today. The quite common view 
that the theories of the apostles concerning Christ’s death were simply 
their adroit efforts to get over the difficulty of Christ’s death as a stumbling 
block proves one thing at least, that the Cross is a stumbling block today, 
and any expedient that will explain it away will be gladly hailed. 

The strongest magnet cannot exert its attractive power through perfect 
insulation. And no one who attempts to preach the Gospel of the Cross in 
these days as Christ and His apostles taught it can fail to see that there is 
much that insulates the minds and hearts of men against it. Are we to give 
up the preaching of the Cross and seek some magic solvent to apply to men 
that once more they may become susceptible to its power? Byno means. 
We must continue to preach it, but we should seek such a method of preach- 
ing it that it will act as its own solvent and find its way to the hearts of 
men. It is of no use for us to say “‘ we must preach the old Gospel”’, and 
thus excuse ourselves for our failure to meet the problems of our own day. 
We must preach the old Gospel in the language of our times so as to meet 
the problems of our times. In order to that we must understand what 
these things are which especially alienate men from the Gospel of the 
Cross. 

The old problem of man’s pride, his unwillingness to humble himself 
in the dust, acknowledge his helplessness and put himself under so great 
obligation to Christ is intensified in our day by the deification of humanity. 
The Incarnation, we are told, is no new thing, but simply the historic 
expression of the eternal humanity of God. This is no doubt a theory very 
attractive to the pride of man and one that leaves no room for an atone 
ment. It is a theory that is immensely popular in these days when an 
attractive theory is preferable to stubborn facts. 

Again, many men of our time are enamored of a method of historical 
research which finds in the patent circumstances of an event its full explan- 
ation and forbids applying to the event universal significance. If Jesus of 
Nazareth aroused the antagonism of Jewish authorities so that they sought 
and compassed His death, that is enough to explain the fact and we must 
not seek ulterior causes. Nor must we translate that event, so easily 
accounted for, into an event of universal significance. This is like assert- 
ing that we understand all about the life and growth of a tree because we 
can explain the constituent elements of the soil in which it grows. A his- 
torical method that fails to account for all the facts is unhistorical and 
unscientific. The true historical method must take account of the facts of 
sin and redemption and the triumphs of the Cross in the last 1900 years. It 
must account for the Christianity of today. Its foundation can be neither the 
fog of mythicizing tendencies in the early church, nor the rottenness of con- 


246 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


scious deception on the part of the apostles. No building of such magni- 
tude could stand on so slender a foundation. It is far more reasonable to 
recognize all the facts in the case and seek to conform our historical 
theories to the facts, than to eliminate the facts in the interest of any theory 
whatsoever. 

Then, there are popular theories of human life which make man so 
absolutely a part of the ‘“‘Cosmic Process” as to lead to a denial of the 
reality of sin, as that word is understood in the New Testament. It makes 
the atonement appear, as Dr. Denny puts it, “like a rock in the sky”. 
To a far greater degree than we are apt to suppose, the Rubdiyat is 
revered above the Bible; and even among many who have never heard of 
Omar Khayyam and who profess to know the Bible, the Rubdiyat expresses 
their belief concerning sin. 


“Oh Thou Who didst with pitfall and with gin 
Beset the Road I was to wander in, 
Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round 
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin! 


“Oh Thou, Who Man of baser Earth didst make, 
And ev’n with Paradise devise the Snake: 
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man 
Is blackened—Man’s forgiveness—give—and take!” 


But more than by anything else perhaps, men are insulated against the 
preaching of the ‘True Cross” by what might be called “an irreligious 
solicitude for God”’. God is revealed by Jesus as the loving Father. Why 
cannot He forgive as the earthly father does? What justice can there be 
in His asking an innocent being to suffer in our stead? ‘‘An innocent one 
cannot take the place of the sinful one anyway” wehear. Asa matter of fact, 
however, the innocent do in human life suffer for the guilty, and often much 
more than the guilty. Illustrations are before our eyes daily of such suffer- 
ing of the innocent not only with but in the place of the guilty. The father 
shields the guilty son and suffers in his stead. He rejoices to do it. 

“Taking the great problem by this small end we may work our way back 
through the human approach to a partial comprehension of it, though its 
majesty and mystery are unsearchable. 

And God does not take an unwilling victim unrelated to Himself and 
force him to take the sinners’ place. It is God Who is in Christ, at infinite 
cost, reconciling the world unto Himself. And why can He not forgive 
without this cost as the earthly father does?) We need to remember that 
however freely the earthly father forgives the wrong against himself, he 
cannot forgive the sin, for the act was not only a wrong to the father but a 
sin against God, and only One can forgive sin. God cannot forgive without 
this atonement, just because the word Father as we commonly use it does 
not fully represent God tomen. For the sweet and beautiful teaching of our 
Lord concerning the Fatherhood of God, men have in these days substituted 
a doctrine that some one has irreverently called ‘“‘the Papahood of God”. 
Let us quote here from Denny, words that this generation sadly need 


THE ATTRACTING POWER OF THE CROSS. 247 


to hear. ‘“ The relations of father and child are undoubtedly more adequate 
to the truth than those of judge and criminal. They are more adequate, 
but so far as our experience of them goes, they are not equaltoit. If the 
sinner is not a criminal before his judge, neither is he a naughty child before 
a parent whose own weakness or affinity to evil introduces an incalculable 
element into his dealings with his child’s fault. * * * It ought to be 
apparent to every one that even the relation of parent and child if it is to be 
a moral relation, must be determined in a way which has universal and 
final validity. It must be a relation in which ethically speaking, some 
things are forever obligatory and some things forever impossible; in other 
words it must be a relation determined by law, and law which cannot 
deny itself. But law in this sense is not legal; it is not ‘judicial’ or ‘ statu- 
tory’ or ‘forensic’; none the less it is real and vital and the whole 
moral value of the relation depends upon it. What would be the value of a 
forgiveness which did not recognize in its eternal truth and worth that 
universal law in which the relations of God and manare constituted? With- 
out the recognition of that law—that moral order or constitution in which 
we have our life in relation to God and each other—righteousness and sin 
and atonement and forgiveness would all alike be words without meaning ”’.* 

These things enable us to see how grave a problem we have to meet. 
It is not preaching a glad message to men who have never heard it, and who 
are stretching out eager hands to receive the blessing. We preach and see 
little if any response. It is as the poet expresses it: 

“As if a well that lay 
Unvisited, till water-weeds had grown 
Up from the depths, and woven a thick mass 
Over its surface, could give back the sun! 
Or, dug from ancient battle plain, a shield 

: Could be a mirror to the stars of heaven!” 

If we are to meet these conditions and overcome them; if our preaching 
and teaching are to form any part of those moral agencies which will result 
in drawing all men to Christ, we must at the outset avoid such presentation 
as will needlessly add to the thickness of the weeds or rust upon the minds 
of men that prevent their response to the appeal of the Cross. In our use of 
terms we must discriminate between their Biblical use and other uses that 
may be very different. For instance, to use a single illustration, the idea of 
propitiation often needlessly alienates men from the Cross because they do 
not understand what the Bible means by the word. “In the heathen view, 
expiation renders the gods wi ling to forgive”. By sacrifice the personal 
anger of the god is app2ased and hisfavor bought. Nowhere in Old or New 
Testament however is there any hint that God has any feeling or disposition 
averse to forgiveness. ‘‘ He does not have to be made willing by expiation 
to forgive sins. He isand always has been willing”. ‘Inthe Biblical view, 
explition enables God consistently with His holiness to do what He was 
never unwilling todo’’.t The problem is simply this. How can the Holy 


* The Atonement and the Modern Mind, p. 71. 
} Stevens’ Johannine Theology, p. 183. 


248 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


One take the impure one to His arms and yet remain the Holy One? That 
problem has been solved. The Holy meets the unholy over the Blood of 
the Atonement. There is death for evil doing. The evil desert of sin is 
recognized, yet there is mercy for the repentant. Sin is not encouraged, 
innocence is not confounded with guilt, and yet the fallen“are lifted up. 

It is interesting and to many cheering, to notice that in England where 
we are led in theological thought by fifteen or twenty years, the evangelicals 
are preaching the atonement in its fullest saving sense. The English dele- 
gates to the Congregational Council held in Boston a few years ago almost 
without exception emphasized and re-emphasized the full atoning significance 
of Christ’s death. As they declared, they have had their Bushnellianism, 
and safely passed through it twenty years ago. A writer in the Independent 
at that time said that he asked one and another of the visiting delegates: 
“Do these men represent the dominant thought of your pulpit?”’, and the 
answer was an emphatic affirmative: ‘‘That is what our young men are 
preaching” said Dr. John Brown of Bedford. ‘‘We hold to Christ’s 
Redemptive significance. We have nowa firmer grasp on the supernatural. 
We have passed through the stage which laid weight on the moral view. 
It is something deeper than that. The foundation rests here. ‘He was 
made sin for us Who knew no sin’. Compared with this the mere ethical 
conception is secondary. As MacLaren said: ‘Christianity without a 
Christ is a dying Christianity’ ”’. 

To have moving and persuasive preaching we must have a moving and 
persuasive Gospel. Letus take heart, and hope that our period of sentimental 
inefficiency may soon be superseded by a time of great power and refreshing 
from the Lord, growing out of a re-habilitation of the old yet ever new 
Gospel of the Cross. 

But before all and through all, if we would effectively preach and teach 
the Gospel, we must ourselves be living examples of what the attratting 
power of the Cross can do. We must be manifestly under the sweet con- 
straint of His love Who died for us. We must apply the law of the wheat to 
ourselves as fully as He applied it to Himself before we can expect our 
message to bear fruit in the lives of others. We must not only be willing to 
cast our lives into the earth of human need, but we must do it. But when 
we do show our understanding of Christ’s love and sacrifice by ourselves 
entering into the living sacrifice of His service, holding not our lives dear 
unto ourselves, that we may fulfil our ministry, then we will have the joy 
unspeakable of having so commended Christ and His cross to men that the 
winsomeness of His love seen through His Cross will master their hearts and 
wills, and will bind them to Him by invisible and unbreakable bonds, and we 
will have hastened the day when by the Attracting Power of the Cross He 
shall have drawn all men unto Himself. 


* THE COMMANDMENT OF GOD AND LIFE EVERLASTING. 
BY REV. STEWART MEANS, D. D., 


RECTOR OF ST. JOHN’s EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NEW HAVEN, CONN. 


St. JOHN 12:49, 50. 


For I have not spoken of Myself: but the Father which sent Me, He 
gave Me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. 

And now I know that His commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever 
I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto Me, so I speak. 


REVISED VERSION. 


For I spake not from Myself: but the Father which sent Me, He hath 
given Me a commandment, what I should say and what I should speak. 
And I know that His commandment is life eternal: the things therefore, 
which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto Me, so I speak. 


One of the most striking things to the thoughtful student of human 
speech is the constant growth and expansion of any language which is the 
possession of a vigorous and progressive people. The wide range and 
extension of its thought is met, in most cases at least, by an increase in the 
terms of its expression. The creative intelligence gets for itself new words 
to set forth the new ideas. Yet the continuity of the language is preserved 
by giving to the old forms a new meaning or if not a new, at least a larger 
and in many respects a different meaning. The obsolete significance of 
words is one of the characteristics of every old literature. When we enter 
upon the circle of ideas and the field of the new Christian consciousness, 
we find here all the characteristic features that are manifest in all literary 
expression. Old words are loaded down with new meaning and it is often 
more necessary to understand the mind of the writer than it is to get a 
definition of his words or phrases. This passage in the Gospel of St. John 
sa striking illustration of this fact. The first word which meets us as 
significant is ‘“‘entola”, “commandment”. It is not anew but an old word 
and the common association is also very old. In its religious significance 
it is notably characteristic. All religions without exception, with which the 
world was then familiar, were at bottom legal in their idea. No man had 
any other conception of religion, and in Judaism it was stamped upon every 
phase of the religious life. It might be said to be one of the fundamental 
elements of human consciousness everywhere. It was the presence of this 
preconception, along with many other inherited mental and spiritual atti- 
tudes, that quickly made itself an influence in determining how Christianity 


* Delivered at the Eighth Conference, held at All Saints Memorial Church, May rx, 1904. 


249 


250 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


would be understood by the mass of men. For men do not and cannot 
divest themselves of all which they have inherited in the way of thought and 
feeling, of temper and atmosphere of soul. Knowing therefore the accus- 
tomed associations of the word ‘‘commandment”’, the attentive reader is 
met with the thought, immediately upon his reading this passage, that St. 
John is introducing a conception which he had inherited as a Jew and 
which was native to his mind and thought before he had ever heard of the 
Gospel or known his Lord. But while there are no philological or gram- 
matical reasons for rejecting this interpretation, there are the strongest 
indications present through an analysis of his thought which render such a 
meaning utterly improbable. 

In the first place, he is giving the words of ‘Christ. Knowing the atti- 
tude of Christ on this way of interpreting religion we know that such a 
conception could not be His and there is no reason for thinking that St. 
John has given any turn to this thought in order to establish a view of his 
own. Christ presents Himself to His disciples as a Son who has a commis- 
sion from His Father and this commission includes not only what He should 
say but also how He should say it. Here is where our words begin to 
cumber the thought and make it hard to penetrate with speech into the real 
meaning which He was endeavoring to make clear to them. We have the 
hard objective way of looking at His life and give the common turn of 
meaning to His words. He does not think of Himself as a messenger sent 
out alone to deliver the law of the Judge and Ruler of all the earth. He is 
preeminently and fundamentally a Son. The commandment of God is not 
an external law under which He is forced to act, but the power of it and the 
imperative character which belongs to it come from His own inward sym- 
pathy and harmony with God’s will. It constrains Him not as an alien 
force but by the very roots which it has in His own will and nature. Itisa 
law to Him because it is also the very principle of His own life. He mani- 
fests and obeys the commandment or the will not because He is compelled 
to, but because it is of the very essence of His own inner nature. It is the 
absolute impossibi:ity of wishing or doing otherwise that makes in the 
forms of human speech a commandment, but it is lifted by the very nature 
of Jesus into the transcendental atmosphere of filial relations. And so it 
is likewise with the setting forth of this commandment or the obedience to 
it. However much emphasis we may lay upon the articulate and verbal 
expression of this commandment, we know that the words fall back for their 
meaning and power upon the life which they express and out of which they 
issue. The teaching of Jesus has its chief if not only value in its relation to 
His character and consciousness. His nature is the perfectly revealed will 
of God. He is the commandment of God. The contents of His very words 
are Himself. If we use the word commandment here in anything like the 
way H2 wishes us to understand it, doubtless it means that it was a com- 
mandment to Him not to speak what He spoke only, but to be what He was. 
Now speech may.be but the executive presentation of a foreign will, but 
“to be”? means the inward and joyful assent of the nature and the consent 


THE COMMANDMENT OF GOD. 251 


of the entire will to the life that wishes itself to be expressed. The man- 
datory character of this will lies in its perfection and its inward command 
over the sources and energies of the soul’s noblest thought. It is not easy 
to measure the words of Christ, and when we pass beyond the speech into 
the consciousness out of which it issued and try to analyze the interior 
volitions and spiritual affinities and affections, we are oppressed with our 
own ignorance and dulness of vision. Yet out of our own Christian exper- 
ience come some gleams of light which help confirm us in the conviction 
that His own life and His own words have roused within us. We can and 
do say that Christ commands us to be pure and gentle and loving. Any 
noble soul could do this. All great souls have been one in this high 
demand. Yet what makes His command not a command /ory us, but a 
command fo us? Here is where we pass into the region of what is real and 
vital. It is the irresistible pressure of His perfection, the revelation of the 
supreme beauty of that which He commands, that wrings from the soul in 
its first reluctance a deep consent. Not to de at once perhaps, but to wish 
to be. We do not discuss or dispute His right. The beauty of goodness is 
imperative to the soul and its right is acknowledged instantly by the recog- 
nition which the soul confesses of its power and glory. There is no com- 
mandment like this that the soul has ever known. Christ presents Himself 
to us and we cannot help it. He is completely and perfectly all that we 
feel is noblest and most holy, and the soul instinctively rushes out to consent 
to His appeal. For appeal is the one word we use here to describe the 
tenderness and gentleness with which He gains us, but at bottom this 
appeal has a moral and spiritual imperativeness transcending Kant’s 
‘* Categorical Imperative ”’. 

That is the testimony of the soul’s submission to the high moralities of 
life. This is the passionate assertion of the spirit of man to the lofty 
sanctities of the character of Jesus Christ. God simply zs in His love for 
men what He is, and Christ feels His being as a command to express the 
same character. Jesus simply zs to us what He is, and we feel His being as 
acommand. Acommand not because it is a legal requirement, but because 
we feel its insistence exerted immediately over the will and spring of all 
our finest desires. It is here in this spiritual and psychological form, and 
not in its legal and objective character, that we are to understand and 
interpret this use of the word “commandment” by Jesus. For we know 
that the supreme object of His life was to renew the filial mind in men and 
to re-establish the filial relation asa conscious element of the soul’s life. 

Now a spiritual relation cannot be enforced by an outward requirement 
or a legal statute, and even the common moralities of life rest upon the in- 
ward capacity of men to feel their beauty and echo their assertion of the 
moral law. Theutter sterility and emptiness of all legal conceptions with 
reference to the production of spiritual life are made manifest the moment 
we attempt to go to the roots of character or the springs of action. It is in- 
spiration that counts here and not the barriers of the law. It is the opening 
of new fountains in the soul, and not the flat dictation of supreme power. 


252 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Nothing is more characteristic in the life of Christ than the inwardness 
of His real life. ‘I have meat to eat, that ye know not of”, He says, and 
we feel the presence there in the secret of His will of the divine love lifting 
it and feeding it with the energy of the infinite goodness. The mystery of 
the Gospel is the mystery of the mind of Christ becoming interior to the 
mind of man and forming a new consciousness which has as its foundation 
and fullest expression the realization of the sonship of man to God. This 
new relation and this new consciousness determine the life and character 
with an accuracy which no external dictation could enforce. It is the 
spiritual energy within the life which is more potent than any thunders from 
Sinai. It is when this word “ entola”’ or ‘“‘commandment” is used by Christ 
as issuing from a relation and an outflow of spiritual activities that it has 
this interior meaning and this spiritual basis. In the Gospel of St. John it 
is used several times. May I ask you to spend a few moments examining 
these passages? In John 10:18 occurs that remarkable passage which lifts 
us into the very face of the spiritual strength of Christ. Beginning with v. 
17, He says: ‘‘ Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I Jay down My 
life, that I may take it again. No one taketh it from Me, but I lay it down 
of Myself. I have power (or right) to lay it down and I have power (or 
right) to take it again. This commandment received I of My Father”. It 
was the love of the Father, the will of salvation which were imperative for 
Him. Love always commands us with its own power which is of perfect _ 
appropriation. It re-creates our will and the new will becomes the law of 
our being. No other meaning is possible for this passage. On the other 
hand in John 11:57 we meet with the common use of the word: ‘“ Now the 
chief priests and the Pharisees had given commandment, that if any man 
knew where He was, he should shew it, that they might take Him”. This 
is external in all its aspects. It is social or statutory authority laying its 
demands without the least reference to character or the interior disposition ; 
it is the legal demand which asks only for an automatic response. In John 
13:34 we are swept back again into the stream and sphere of spiritual 
relations and activities. ‘‘A new commandment I give unto you that ye 
love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another”’. 
No one can possibly understand the word commandment here as equivalent 
in quality or range, corresponding in meaning or character with the legal 
authority of the Pharisees. Its meaning and efficacy lay in the inward 
persuasion which the perfection of His love exerted upon their dispositions, 
and the creative energy of His affection, It is not an injunction, but a new 
spirit, the spirit of His love, filling them too with a similar love. Even the 
most rigid and narrow legalist among His hearers could not but feel that 
the word commandment had a new meaning and a loftier and more awful 
authority than even the law of Moses. For the spirit of God was testifying 
to the spirit of man and the heart of man felt the new life urging its own 
necessities. In the 14th chapter we have three passages in which this phrase 
is used: “If ye love Me, ye will keep My commandments”. ‘“ He that 
hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me; and 


THE COMMANDMENT OF GOD. 253 


he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and 
will manifest Myself unto him”. ‘“ But that the world may know that I 
love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do”’. 
In all these passages there lies back behind the sense of command the 
authority which creates it. This authority is not external to the man or to 
the Son Himself. It is love that in its re-enforcement of the spiritual 
energies proves its own authority. For the highest feelings are a law to the 
soul which no ordinance of man or tradition can coerce or destroy. The 
floods are risen up and sweep the soul on into new channels. It is not 
authority based upon outward claims, but the principle of the real life of 
man responding to the presence of the divine life that floods it with its 
regenerating power. It is the determining power of a new love, the passion 
of a new affection. Loyalty to duty carries men to death, but the Son of 
God goes to the cross with a joy no man can measure, in obedience to the 
very law of His being, and reveals the strength of the inward demand which 
is the ultimate fact in man’s true relation to God. 

In the 15th chapter the same phrase occurs three times again. “If ye 
keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept 
My Father’s commandments and abide in His love”. ‘This is My com- 
mandment, that ye love one another as I have loved you”. The secret of 
His love is the foundation of their new lives. It is a secret because it is 
that which is felt and in the inward stores of the soul’s affections makes its 
claims. This is its only and supreme authority. No man can prove the 
necessity of obedience to Christ, for it rests upon no outward claims. ‘This 
obedience which ranges free above all the prescriptions of man and all the 
ordinances of religion is the fountain of all pieties of life and heroisms of 
character. It is always aspiring to new elevations and reaches forward to 
larger and nobler living. Its aim is the full realization of its filial relation, 
and it drives the soul with the pressure of an ever expanding affection. It 
is the most baffling and puzzling thing in the history of the human soul and 
is the despair of the world, for it stands upon nothing but its inward expe- 
rience and deep conviction which can never be set forth in decrees or laws. 
The more the soul feels the love of God, the more the spirit of the Son 
grows into fulness and power, the more imperative and complete becomes 
the insistence with which the spirit plunges on into the fullest possession 
and expression of its filial character. This is the unique and mysterious 
fact of the new Christian personality. In the immediate contact of God 
with the human soul conscious of its sonship, there is an enormous expan- 
sion of vision and power. The spiritual capacities are vitalized by the 
energy of the divine life and each life unfolds itself under the creative force 
of the divine love and gives full and joyful obedience to the inward pressure 
of the new life that is seeking realization and expression. This interpreta- 
tion of the commandment will be confirmed if we regard the obedience not 
from the point of view of the external act, but of the inward disposition and 
assent. Thehuman will in relation to a legal demand stands clearly dis- 
criminated and separate from that requirement. Thereis a certain mechan- 


254 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


ical adjustment on the part of the individual, and his personality is by no 
means merged in the law. In the case of the obedience of Christ there is 
the steady and easy flow of the nature forward along the divine will, with the 
purpose of God working dynamically as an interior energy and not a 
mechanical or even a moral compulsion. The Divine will is His will, and 
the manifestation of His nature is the revelation of the nature of God. They 
are not two separate things, two factors combined in a given result, but the 
organic unity in which it cannot be said that the elements can be separated 
and distinguished as the particular contributions of two distinct personali- 
ties. We do not say of His life or act, this is the special issue of the 
character and disposition of Christ, and this other is the clearly defined 
manifestation of the will of God. The obedience of Christ we feel to be the 
essential will of God, for that obedience is set forth in a moral nature and a 
spiritual character that is congruous with the character of God. This being 
the psychological and internal order of the spiritual facts, it throws the legal 
estimate of the words “‘commandment” and ‘‘obedience” under a new law or 
principle of interpretation, and that law or principle is found in the essential 
unity of the will of God and the mind of Christ. But the full significance of 
this order of interpretation comes more fully into the light, when we consider 
the entire passage as setting forth the law of the life of man in its organic 
and fundamental relations with Christ. 

“IT know His commandment is life everlasting’, or as the revised ver- 
sion has it: ‘I know that His commandment is life eternal”. The two 
terms of “life eternal”’, or ‘‘ zoe-aionios”’, mutually qualify and define each 
other. Let us take the adjective first. Like all great words, ‘‘aionios” has 
its popular and its scientific meaning. It is a phrase not only of common 
speech, but of philosophical significance. In its primary meaning as used for 
a term of accurate thought and definition, it means that which is apart and 
above time. That is, the category of time has no relation whatever with it. 
It is neither a limitation nor an extension of the conception which is planted 
in the idea of time. Kant tells us that the categories of time and space are 
the necessary laws or conditions under which all knowlecge of sensuous 
things, taking the term in its widest extension, must be attained. Now, I 
am not trying to introduce the Critical Philosophy into the Gospel of St. 
John, or smuggle Transcendental Ideas into the speech of Jesus, but I am 
using these distinctions in order to reach back to the fact that super- 
sensuous facts, spiritual realities, ought not to be treated as lying under the 
same conditions of apprehension as those which belong to the physical 
phenomena or the ordinary mental processes of everyday life. 

Only in its most popular and derivative uses does the term have a 
quantitative meaning. It specifically, and particularly in the Gospel of St. 
John, has a qualitative significance. ‘‘ Eternal life’ is a special kind of life 
that only in a loose and rhetorical way can we say admits of quantitative 
increase or decrease. Goodness is goodness always, and any increase in 
it means, not by dimensions or measurement, but by vividness, intensity 
and reality. Its character and its quality are always the same. It is with- 


THE COMMANDMENT OF GOD. 255 


out succession. There was no time when goodness became goodness. It 
neither increases or decreases by age or term of years. So with all moral 
and spiritual facts. They are truths, and the reality of truths of this order 
lies in their quality and the energy with which they act in the world of 
man’s spiritual nature. But the most important word in this phrase is 
““zoe”’. It occurs in the Gospel of St. John 34 times. It is generally recog- 
nized as one of the significant words in this Gospel. It is moreover almost 
never used to signify mere physical life or even mental activity. ‘There are 
many ways in which we can approach it and find at least some phases of 
its meaning. As contrasted, for instance, with death, it means union and 
fellowship with God. For death is separation from Him; not separation 
in the sense of being outside of Him physically or metaphysically, but as 
having different moral ideals and spiritual purposes; an atmosphere in 
which the mind and will of God are not the prevailing and dominating 
characteristics. Outside of God, hence, means outside of the world of 
His spiritual life, His affection, love, purity, holiness. And not to have 
these as the contents of the soul is to be dead. There is only one life in 
the thought of Christ, and that is, God. The word is lifted to its highest 
significance. The pallid existence of men whose spiritual natures are 
stunted and dwarfed, in whose veins the sluggish flow of weak spiritual 
purposes hardly keeps alive the moral will of the man, is not life. It lacks 
that essential fulness and blessedness which are of the very essence of 
God’s being, His perfect glory and our perfect joy. Now the fulness of 
life does not consist in our recognition of the fact. It is not the mere indi- 
vidual apprehension, the feeling of the presence of an existence in which 
the person has no part or share, but the divine life flows into the human 
life until the divine consciousness of its own character and sweetness and 
power become the consciousness of the individual soul that has become 
partaker of this life. The qualifying adjective “aionios”’ is not therefore a 
quantitative term, but rather a distinctly spiritual one. ‘‘ Eternal life” is 
the qualitative essence of the character, not continuity or quantity of life. 
The adjective is used with the noun in this Gospel nine times and, without 
examining each passage in detail, we may assert without much danger of 
contradiction that it has this specifically spiritual meaning. Life is eternal, 
because in the first place it is life real and actual as no other lifeis. Itinten- 
sifies the conception of life by showing its real and spiritual origin. We 
can the more readily see this inasmuch as the word or adjective, ‘‘eternal’’, 
in St. John’s Gospel is only used with life. It is the distinctively qualifying 
adjective of that word. Eternal life is therefore the inseparable condition 
or accompaniment of the entrance into the real life of the spirit. It has no 
date, or rather, if it has, it is reckoned from the moment of entrance into 
Christ, or spiritual acceptance or inward appropriation of the Gospel as the 
matter is presented to us as a personal appropriation of Jesus Christ, or the 
inward consent of the nature to the law of His being. All adjectives repre- 
sent qualities, and it is not a correct u:e of words to convert an attribute 
into a cause and say that eternity is what makes the life eternal. Nor, on 


256 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


the other hand, is it possible to place the terms in the order of antecedent 
and consequent and affirm that life being in eternity it becomes partaker of 
its character. Further, we may affirm, that the acceptance of the Gospel 
does not confer eternal life. The matter is more closely and organically 
related. Eternal life is the subjective state represented by the objective 
statement of the knowledge of God or the reception of the Gospel. Christ 
is life. The reception of Christ or God is the actual acceptance of life. 
It is the dynamic activity of the Divine life that constitutes the life of the 
believer. ‘‘ This is life eternal, that they might know God and Jesus Christ 
whom He hath sent”. The knowledge here is not used in any intellectual 
way whatever. It means that inward and spiritual recognition which is 
equivalent to the term ‘“‘faith”’ in St. Paul. The contents of life, which 
are God and Christ, have nothing to do with the physical experiences of 
men. Death is not the beginning of eternal life, nor, on the other hand, is the 
resurrection the date of its origin. Christ had life in Himself from the very 
beginning. 

He also gives life in giving Himself. It is this personal and 
immediate participation in eternal life which distinguishes the words of 
Christ in this Gospel from the conventional use of the phrase. ‘‘I know 
that His commandment is eternal life’’, Jesus says. Eternal life is, not 
shall be. It is the presence and the revelation of the Divine will in the life 
of man. But it is the life of man as consciously determined by the will of 
God, and the consciousness of its supreme beauty and truth. The moral 
and spiritual evidence of this beauty and truth are found by men in Jesus 
Christ, who is the incarnation of this holiness and love, grace and truth. 
These are His revelations, revelations not of Himself but of God. His Self 
is the expression of the Divine Self. The submission of the soul to Him, 
the obedience of the heart to His inward disposition, creates a new moral 
and spiritual consciousness. The union wrought out between the soul 
Christ loves and the soul that loves Christ is not a merely external union, 
but is like that which exists between the Father and the Son. In this 
blending or transforming of the inward consciousness issues the sense and 
certainty of Christ. So at the end, each through his own spiritual experi- 
‘ence is able to affirm as a member of Christ that which Christ declares is 
the heart and meaning of His own life. ‘For I speak not from Myself: 
but the Father which sent Me, He hath given Me a commandment, what I 
should say, and what I should speak, and I know that this commandment 
is life eternal: the things therefore, which I speak, even as the Father hath 
said unto Me, so I speak”’. 


* THE WASHING OF THE DISCIPLES’ FEET AND THE LAW OF SERVICE. 
(St. JOHN 13:1-17.) 
BY REV. EDWIN ALONZO BLAKE, PH. D., D. D.. 


PASTOR OF THE TREMONT STREET METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, BOSTON, MAss. 


The event which we are to consider at this time, is one of very great 
importance. Largely so, if I mistake not, because it is the embodiment of 
a law that underlies all Christian civilization. We are to consider it of 
course as generic in kind and not specific. There are those I believe who 
actually do upon occasion wash one another’s feet. I certainly would not 
be willing to question their Christianity as thus manifested, for I have the 
most profound respect for all who ‘ profess and call themselves Christians” ; 
but it seems to me we are to seek here the spirit rather than the letter, to 
discover the law embodied in the act rather than perceive the act alone. 


The scene also marks the closing events in the history of our Lord’s 
personal work on earth. The opening sentence of chapter 13, ‘‘ Before the 
feast of the Passover’’, would preclude the thought that it is the Pascal 
supper that is being described. Neither could the action have taken place 
according to the King James’ translation, ‘“‘after supper was ended ”, neither 
as the Revision has it, ‘‘during supper ”’, for it will readily be observed that 
at either time it would have been inopportune. Rather is the thought that 
supper time had arrived. In coming from the bath, probably with unsandled 
feet, they had become somewhat dusty again. According to the usual custom 
they found the basin of water prepared for them. It might have been the 
duty of the youngest disciple to perform this service, or possibly the one 
whose turn it was from the last meal, as was not unfrequently the case. A 
conversation had taken place, however, which turned the whole trend of 
things and presented to our Lord a most remarkable opportunity to impress 
a great lesson. So great was the lesson of service to mankind impressed 
upon him or from some other cause, that John omitted that most interesting 
story which to me seems the pivotal point of the Master’s act. 

For this we must turn to Luke, and there we have it in chapter 22, 
v. 24. Although they had traveled so much with the Lord and had so long 
listened to His teaching, they had as yet failed to grasp the meaning of 
greatness in His kingdom, and they had been contending who should be 
accounted the greater. By referring to Luke you will observe that Jesus 
had told them that one of them had it in mind to betray Him. This causes 


* Delivered at the Fifth Conference, held at the Central Baptist Church, February ro, 1904. 


257 


258 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Professor Dods to remark, in regard to this strife among the disciples, that 
‘the juxtaposition of this strife among the eleven with the announcement of 
the traitor gives to it by comparison the aspect of a pardonable infirmity 
in otherwise loyal men, and it is so treated by Jesus”. If it were the custom 
of the younger to do the feet washing upon such occasions, we can see a 
very forceful meaning to the words of our Lord in Luke, when He said, 
“He that is the greater among you, let him become the younger, and he 
that is chief, as he that doth serve ”’. 

But it is not necessary for us to pause long over the interpretation 
of causes which led to the Saviour’s action at this time. I think we will all 
agree that the great Teacher seized upon the circumstances to impress 
a lesson in serving for His disciples then and for all time to come. I think 
I can also observe that it was to be the key note to the highest type of all 
coming civilization. There is one predominant feature in Christianity, 
which, if I mistake not, differentiates it from all other religions, viz.: it has 
an ideal to which it is ever tending. You will recall that the Lord at one 
time remarked that His mission was not to destroy but to fulfil. The 
thought is that we have as it were the seeds of the future ideal in the old 
dispensation, and that He came to add new life and vigor that it might 
attain the ideal. To this end He bent the energies of His short life, and 
sought so to instruct His followers that they might carry on the same work. 
It is in this unfolding that we behold the beauty of this little story under 
consideration. If this new church was to look for a new kingdom, where 
were they to search for the foundations? In cther words, what was to be 
the governing principle or law that was to control it? 

When the time arrived when the most menial service was to be per- 
formed, with the conversation of dispute still ringirg within His ears, He 
disrobes Himself accordirg ‘to custcm, takes the basin of water and the 
towel and stoops to the humble work. When He had ccmpleted the wash- 
ing and reinvested Himself with His garments and reclined with them at 
the table, He explained the meaning, and then added as recorded in v. 
15, ‘‘For I have given you an example, that ye also should do as I have 
done to you”. Here, then, we behold the law of service, which is to be the 
law of all Christian civilization. 

In this act the Leader, the acknowledged King, has shown by actual 
example what He rightfully expects of every subject. It needs but a 
cursory glance at His life frcm His entrance upon His mission to its com- 
pletion, that service for others had been the rule of His own life, and why 
should He not expect it of those who were to be called by His name? 

Before entering upon the application of this Jaw in various modes of 
life, I wish to direct your attention to a few circumstances which to me 
seem very significant. 

1. Our Lord was fully conscious that His end was near and that the 
shadow of the cross was dark athwart His pathway. This is indicated in 
the first verse of chapter 13, “Jesus knowing that His hour was come that 
He should depart out of this world unto the Father”. 


THE WASHING OF THE DISCIPLES’ FEET. 259 


Such times are usually occasions of ceasing from labor. He had done 
all He could to impress the grandeur of His mission upon the world, but had 
been repulsed at every point, and now His very life was to be required 
at the hand of His enemies ; and what would seem to make the matter more 
serious, was the fact that at the very table with Him was the man who was 
to betray Him. But it was the last opportunity that was to present itself for 
impressing this great law upon their minds, and with that calmness and 
self poise always characteristic of the great Teacher, He faltered not. 

2. I notice again that Jesus was conscious of His greatness. The 
third verse of this chapter reads, ‘‘ Jesus knowing that the Father had given 
all things into His hands, and that He came forth from God, and goeth unto 
God ”’, etc. 

Consciousness of power, of divine power withal did not hinder Him in 
the performance of this service. Such being the case, He must have been 
aware that at His command He could have escaped the cross and have 
destroyed His enemies. Greatness and condescension are here brought 
face to face. None but the great could successfully face such difficulties. 
The act was the natural outcome of that greatness and not the greatness of 
the act. I presume many of us could recall deeds performed by men which 
of themselves were noble. These men may have done many such deeds, still 
no one considered them great men. Sinister motives seemed to luk beneath 
the action depriving it of its apparent greatness. It is only when we keep 
in mind that the great purpose of Christ was to reveal the way of God to 
mankind, to show us the great Father-heait of God as exemplified in His 
own life that we can understand why when conscious of His divine origin 
and power He did not resent the manifold indignities so often manifested 
toward Him, and at once seek retribution. This has too often been the spirit 
shown by His followers. He might frequently have said to many of them, 
“Have I been so long with you and yet hast thou not known Me?” But 
as life or death were before Him it certainly must have been within His 
power to take either one or the other. From subsequent expressions we 
are to judze that life had its charms for the Holy One as it does for you 
or me. We must not be oblivious of His humanity when we exalt His 
divinity. But He also discovered the import of the law which He was about 
to emphasize, and for the moment turning His back upon His conscicus 
greatness He performs the act under circumstances of the greatest trial. 

3. The intensity of Jesus’ love is worthy of attention. John of all the 
disciples seems to have most appreciated the lovirg heart of Jesus. It 
impresses him more. The only commandment of Christ which seems to 
impress John is that of love. In his first epistle (4:21), he thus writes: 
“ And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love 
his brother also”. Then when writing to the “elect lady”’, he refers to a 
commandment which they had had from the beginning, and that command- 
ment was love to one another. God’s love thus manifested through the Son 
was a constant wonder to John. ‘‘ What manner of love” he exclaims. By 
this the Apostle sees that we are called the “‘sons of God’’. In his Gospel, 


260 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


in the very beginning, he declares that it was love that brought Christ to the 
world, and that belief in Him would bring the life eternal. Not content 
with such assertions he rises to the more wonderful declaration that “God 
is love’, and that he that would abide in God must abide in love (1 John 
4: 8,16). I suppose that the assertion that God is love is a description 
rather of the character than of the being of God. One has well said, I think, 
that ‘‘this truth was for Johna simple conclusion from the mission and work 
of Jesus. It was the inference regarding the unseen from the seen”’.* 

We are unable to fathom the immense influence that the act of feet- 
washing by our Lord had upon the “ beloved disciple”. The statement in 
the first verse of the chapter under consideration is significant: ‘ Having 
loved His own that were in the world, He loved them unto the end”. The 
words “‘ His own” must be considered in a little more restricted sense than 
the same words in the first chapter and eleventhverse. Here it would seem 
that He is referring to that little band of twelve whom He had selected for 
their instruction in taking up the work which He was soon to leave in person. 
If this be accepted, it will make it a little more interesting. We commend 
the love of God in Jesus Christ for the race, but when we realize that the 
love is for the individual, that very concentration makes it more valuable. 

I think our admiration of Jesus’ love and for the menial act is height- 
ened and deepened when we remember that he who was to betray Him was 
in their company and received this service from the hand of his Master. It 
had already been put into Judas’ heart to betray. I cannot quite agree with 
Meyer that Satan put it into his own heart, for it was his intention to destroy 
the work of the Son of God from the beginning. The Saviour knew full 
well at that time who was to betray Him, that he was already pondering it 
within his heart, and yet despite this, He loved him and yearned for his soul. 
Our Lord saw the events about to transpire, and yet, His 


“Love alters not with His brief hours and weeks, 
But He bears it even to the edge of doom”. 


II. Zhe Washing of the Feet. We now come to the distinguishing act 
of that eventful hour. The act of that occasion was but another illustration 
of the law of service which the great Teacher had at all times sought to 
enforce. You will remember that John and James, the sons of Zebidee, 
came to Him upon a certain occasion seeking important positions in His 
coming kingdom, but that without attempting to disabuse them of their 
error in regard to the character of that kingdom, He at once showed them 
that for the attainment of that or any position in His kingdom, there was 
service to be done. It matters little which Greek word is used which we 
translate ‘‘service”’ or any of its derivatives; He at all times seeks to 
impress the thought that we must serve humanity and thereby we are serving 
God. 

Recall for a moment the scene of the 12th chapter of this Gospel. 


* Gilbert: ‘‘ Interpretations”, p. 313. 


THE WASHING OF THE DISCIPLES’ FEET. 261 


Certain Greek philosophers had been seeking an interview with the Lord. 
This little band of Greeks were well versed in their own mythology, and 
taking advantage of this, Jesus made use of an illustration probably based 
on the Eleusinian mystery, and by it they were enabled to comprehend the 
teaching of the coming of a new life from an old or former life. They were 
perfectly familiar with the legend of Dionysus, his second birth with Semele 
as his mother, and acquainted with the myth of Persephone. From these 
came the symbol of vegetation shooting up with such verdure at spring time, 
and apparently withdrawing into the earth as autumn approaches. When, 
therefore, the Teacher used the illustration of v. 24 they understood its 
meaning. ‘‘ Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die it abideth 
alone”. Then followed what would have been a paradox without the pre- 
ceding assertion, ‘‘he that loveth his life loseth it”. Here is the law of 
service taught which our Lord is about to illustrate to His disciples and 
finally to the world. If you have no service to render, no death to die, you 
will remain alone, would seem to be the thought there expressed. 

You well know, as the margin indicates, that for the word here trans- 
lated ‘‘life’”’, two different words appear in the Greek. If you are anxious 
to keep your individual life, your manhood, you must be willing to sacrifice 
it in doing good for others. This done, you will gain the life eternal. 

This He failed not to apply to Himself as He beheld the darkening 
athwart His pathway. Although He did say ‘‘ Father, save Me from this 
hour”, He immediately exclaimed: ‘‘For this cause came I unto this 
hour”. He felt then, as ever, that His life was one of service for humanity, 
even unto the death of the cross. 

Let us take, if you will, that wonderful parable known as that of the 
Good Samaritan. It has been an inspiration for hundreds of years to all 
Christendom. Orders have been formed upon it as aruling principle, and 
charitable institutions have received their life from it as a foundation. It is 
within the very warp and woof of all working Christianity. But what does 
it record? A little act of service whose immediate teaching is to reveal the 
meaning of neighbor, but whose ultimate end is to teach us that that 
neighbor needs our service. 

The principal record of the eleventh chapter is the raising of Lazarus, 
but the ground thought for us to learn is that Christ served in that hour of 
trouble. But to me one of the greatest representations of this law of 
service by way of teaching is given by the great Leader in His description 
of the judgment. They are represented as coming to Him after He has 
told them that they are to inherit the kingdom prepared for them. So 
greatly are they astonished that they are represented as crying out to Him: 
“‘When did we do this? We have no remembrance of seeing Thee in such 
condition and ministering unto Thee”. The answer is significant. ‘ Inas- 
much as ye did it unto one of these, My brethren, even the least, ye did it 
unto Me”. 

To me it has seemed that Jesus illustrated all these teachings by the 
feet-washing. It would almost appear that He might have said to His fol 


262 | THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


lowers, “ You have been with Me for a long while now. You have heard 
what I have said about service in the world. I have been seeking to show 
you that it lay at the very foundation of all greatness. It is at the very 
entrance of My kingdom and you must understand what it means. You are 
all seeking greatness in that kingdom. You are thinking as did the lawyer, 
‘What good thing may Ido?’ Ican say nomore. I want you to scan My 
life, it has been one of service from the beginning. You must allow Me to 
wash your feet as the symbol of what I mean”. After saying this they saw 
the light, and Peter cried out, ‘“‘ Lord, not my feet only, but my hands and 
my head”. 

In this ‘act shines the light of which Professor Beardslee spoke, ‘‘ The 

study of Christ’s mission, if it follows the lead of John, will center around 
one word,—light. Christ is the light of the world”. So here He becomes 
our light, and there is no need of walking in darkness. 
*. . I might emphasize here the value of doing over feeling, I have known 
people to wander in the dark for weeks and all because so much stress was 
placed on ‘“‘ how do you feel”, and when the candidate could claim no bet- 
ter feeling he was told he must feel a little worse, plead a little more, and 
then he might feel a little better. Just what this meant, or just what was 
the process through which he was to pass was never made quite plain, but 
it was fully taught that his acceptance depended largely on feeling. 

The teaching of Christ, so far as I am able to see, calls upon us first to 
do ‘something for God, and the feeling will naturally follow. It will be 
observed that the Master was constantly telling men to give, even if it were 
but a cup of cold water to the thirsty, as well as many other things, and 
when they had done these righteous things in the name of Christ or 
because they had accepted Him as their guide they would receive the 
tighteous man’s reward. Feeling will undoubtedly follow in a majority of 
cases, but we are to do something first and consider the feeling as a result. 

Application of the Law.—lf the act of feet-washing embodied a law, as 
I have already stated to be my belief, it must be universally applied. 
When we studied arithmetic or the higher mathematics, it was the custom 
to state the rule and then illustrate it by some appropriate example. But in 
reality, although I do not remember that the teachers told us so, the rule of 
course followed from the example. It could not be otherwise. So here 
from the great Teacher we have first the example, and from that follows 
the rule. You have observed that the disciples wanted to know why He 
should do this act, and He told them to allow the act, and He would after- 
ward explain. This was also the case at the time of the baptism of Jesus, 
when John was about to forbid His coming to him, “ Suffer it to be so 
now’’, was the answer, waiting for subsequent developments to substanti- 
ate the assertion, ‘‘ It becometh us to fulfil all righteousness ”’. 

1. JVations. The law must be applied to nations in their dealings 
with each other. 

This was the one great lapse in the grasp of thought among the 
Hebrews. Accept to the full extent that they were a ‘chosen people”’, 


THE WASHING OF THE DISCIPLES’ FEET. 263 


that God had given them a revelation superior to what had been received 
by the nations about them, they never seemed to comprehend the fact that 
such privileges demanded a service on their part to their neighbors. They 
grew to be more and more exclusive, and finally thought no one was fit for 
existence but their own nation. It would seem that they were sufficiently 
warned of this fault of exclusiveness. There are those who believe that the 
story of Jonah was written to show them the larger opportunities which 
they might embrace, but the ‘‘hermit” thought possessed them so thor- 
oughly that it controlled them to the days of the promised Messiah. If we 
are to follow out this law there can be no hermit nations. 

In our time this law is manifesting itself nationally in reciprocity 
treaties. It may be doubtful if the greedy politician recognizes the source 
or feels its full import when he is arguing such national measures, but it is 
most certainly an exhibition of serving one another. 

In the same category must be classed the boards of arbitration, of 
which we hear so much in this century. 

You may recall that President Woolsey, in his ‘Introduction to the 
Study of International law”, says that the Roman Imperial Power origi- 
nally fulfilled this function, and that it was feebly perpetuated by the popes 
in the medizval times. Henry IV of France sought by some such means 
to avert religious wars, and so on through the succeeding years it has been 
the strenuous efforts of many national leaders to confederate the nations in 
such a manner that war might be averted and the weaker nations pre- 
served. It was reserved for those living at the close of the nineteenth 
century to witness a mighty nation espousing the cause of a despised 
people, fighting their battles for them, and then raising them to the honor 
and dignity of statehood among the nations of the earth. I opine, however, 
that the world has not yet seen the full outcome of the application of the 
law of service among nations. I contend, without approving or disapprov- 
ing of recent methods, or without entering the arena of politics at all, that 
it is a service which this country has owed to all the nations of the earth for 
more than a half century to construct and maintain a waterway across the 
Isthmus of Panama. I also maintain that all intercourse of one nation with 
another should be based on this Christ Law of Service. It would not be 
politic to study this law at this time in all its ramifications in these direc- 
tions, neither is there time; but if ever any nation attains to the highest 
possible Christian civilization, it will only be by accepting and working 
upon Christ’s Law of Service. 

One has well said, ‘‘ That the principle of service sees the world no 
longer as divided, fragmentary, a disconnected series of spheres * * * 
but as one world, an organism, a cosmos, a single sphere in which is no 
higher or lower, no academic aristocracy or detached group of the learned, 
but an interdependent, associated, common life, involving the researches of 
the recluse and the bent back of the man with the hoe”’.* 


* Professor Peabody: ‘‘ The Religion of an Educated Man”, p. 81. 


264 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


2. Literature. This brings us naturally to the application of the law 
of service to literature. 

Possibly there is no better illustration than the service of literature 
rendered to England in the middle of the last century. It was one of the 
great factors which assisted in bringing about the great revolution without 
recourse to arms. Carlyle seemed to catch the spirit of the law and was 
willing to apply it to himself. Those were immortal words which he wrote, 
and worthy of inscription in gold and to be placed in the sanctum sanc- 
torum of every aspirant in literature: 

‘“‘We are here to do God’s will. The only key toa right life is self- 
renunciation. The man who lives for self, who works for selfish ends is a 
charletan at bottom, no matter how great his powers. The man who lives 
for self alone has never caught a vision of the true meaning and order of 
the universe. * * * Life shall be a barren, worthless thing for me unless 
I seek to fallin with God’s plan, and do the work that He has sent me 
here to do”’. 

Scarcely less important are the words of that noble Italian patriot who 
providentially sojourned an exile in England at that time, and who espoused 
the cause of liberty of that strange land: Joseph Mazini. He wrote: “ Life 
is a mission. Every other definition of life is false and leads all who accept 
it astray. * * * Life is a mission, a duty, therefore its highest law. 
In the comprehension of that mission, and fulfilment of that duty, lies our 
means of future progress, the secret of the stage of existence into which we 
shall be initiated at the conclusion of this earthly stage”’. 

What could be truer to the law of service than the expression of these 
two leaders in the literature of their times. But they were not the only 
ones who used their pens for what to them seemed for the good and exalta- 
tion of their country and their fellow men. If you are at all familiar with 
Mazini’s life (Joseph Mazini, His Life, Writings, Etc. pp. 129-200), you will 
recall that it was not enough for him to be engaged in these public benefac- 
tions in the cause of liberty. Finding that there were hundreds of Italian 
children in London who were extremely ignorant, his great loving heart 
was so moved that he induced men of means to assist in founding a school 
for their instruction. 

At this period Charles Dickens was just entering upon his career, which 
was to make him one of the foremost instrumentalities in bringing light to 
darkest England. Elizabeth Barrett, Thomas Hood and a host of others 
were heard in verse and prose sounding the note of freedom; legislators 
heard the cry of humanity and consecrated their pens to its services. 

It is impossible for one to trace the far-reaching influence that the true 
literate has had in moulding and fashioning society. There are no more 
hopeful signs of the times than the fact that such men as Ely, and Vincent, 
and Zeublen and many other men of letters have been willing to use their 
pens and time in what is termed the Citizen’s Library Economics, Politics 
and Sociology, whose aim is to make scientific work in the field of the 
humanities clear and interesting to ordinary intelligent citizens. And I 


THE WASHING OF THE DISCIPLES’ FEET. 265 


doubt if the world ever saw the day when so many of our men of education, 
college presidents and professors, noted clergymen and leaders of society 
offered themselves in free service for aJl mankind. Never were so many 
books published, and good ones, too, to help the rising generation. I well 
remember when ‘Todd’s Students’ Manuel” was not only the best but 
about the only book of its kind, but now it is not so. Almost every man of 
any standing in literature gives us the benefit of his education. You can 
well imagine my chagrin the other day when your secretary asked me what 
books I had written. All I could do was to remark, in the language of the 
celebrated Dr. Daniel Curry, that I know too much to write a poor one but 
not enough to write a good one. I rejoice that so many educated men are 
consecrating their knowledge and pens for the public good. 

4. Zhe Church. We now ask ourselves the question, what service 
shall the church render to humanity? The day of controversy has very 
nearly passed. Heresy is little thought of except now and then when the 
superior light of some noted professor shines so brightly that it blinds our 
eyes and we think he is in the dark when, forsooth, it is ourselves, and we 
wish to try him for heresy. But, generally, all is'at peace and the church 
stands confronted with tremendous problems. 

You may recall that Canon Fremantle* claims that the fourth and 
fifth chapters of John’s Revelation reveals the ideal or destination of the 
church of God. In the center is the slain lamb, that is God made known 
through the self-renouncing love expressed in the cross of Christ. Sur- 
rounding these are the elders representing the redeemed humanity, then the 
four living beings which represent the animate creation. He claims that we 
must take this vision as representing a world right about us, and not far 
away, that is being slowly but steadily transformed by the expansion of the 
Christian church. Whatever definition we may give to the church, its mis- 
sion is a service for humanity. As Christ came to the multitudes to help 
them, so are we to go to the multitudes in His stead today and render them 
the service we are able to give. 

I wish especially to call your attention to the latter part of v. 15, and 
the whole of v.16. They seem to me to be significant :—‘‘ That ye should 
do as I have done to you. Verily, I say unto you, a servant is not greater 
than his lord: neither one that is sent greater than he that sent him” 
This of course will be seen to refer directly to the scene of washing that has 
just transpired. Turn now if you will to v. 34, and there you will read :— 
‘““A new commandment I give unto you, that ye loveone another”. It would 
almost seem that the great Exemplar paused fora moment to get their 
attention, for what He was about to say was what there was new in this 
commandment. Their attention riveted upon Him, He continues :—“ Even 
as I have loved you, that ye love one another ’”’. 

The word ‘‘even” denotes conformity rather than a simple compari- 
son. Their love, to be forever manifested, is to be of the same nature. 


* Fremantle: *‘ The World a Subject of Redemption”, p. 8. 


266 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


The two ways of rendering this passage are: 1. “I give you a new com- 
mancment, that ye love one another with the same devotion with which I 
have loved you”. 2. ‘I give youa new commandment, that ye love one 
another, even as up to this moment I loved you, in order that you may 
imitate My love one toward another”.* While the first rendering gives the 
character, the second rendering gives the ground of that mutual Christian 
love. The revised version gives this in the margin. That love which was 
to be the characteristic of the new commandment was on that occasion 
manifested in the act which at first Peter so strenuously deplored. 

Indeed He had manifested His superiority, not only to them, but His 
superiority to the age in which He was living. His words so fitly spoken at 
all times; His self control under the most trying circumstances; His fear- 
lessness, yet gentleness of bearing had all disclosed to them that superiority, 
while now the closing act of His short life had clearly demonstrated to them 
that He was willing to use that transcendent greatness in lifting the race to 
its rightful position. His very coming to the earth, His denial of the glory 
which He had with the Father, would and did demonstrate this; but they 
could not then understand that any more clearly than we do now, and so to 
give the example that all might understand, He stoops to the menial service 
of washing the disciples’ feet. 

We sometimes hear the cry, ‘‘give us the old time religion”’, and it is 
doubtful, if many who are sounding this through the land understand what 
it means. Mr. Ely in one of his lecturest says that while the metaphysicians 
are crying :—‘“ Back to Kant!” or “‘ Back to Plato!” let the church raise the 
cry :—‘‘ Back to Christ!” This is what I understand by the “old time 
religion’, and not one of noise and emotionalism. It may, and will to a 
certain degree possess both of these, but it will be because the church, 
Christian people are willing to bring aid as Christ did to the degraded 
humanity by being its servant. 

In the light of this interpretation, there is a place for every follower of 
Jesus Christ, and when he is out of that place, he is of no use to the world. 
If one has gained education beyond one’s fellows, it is the imperative duty 
for that one to use it among the ignorant or those who are not as enlightened. 
‘The thanks of this whole land, yea, of the whole Christendom, are due to 
President Eliot and a score of other men of like character, who, in the 
plenitude of their research are willing to meet their opponants on social 
questions in open fair debate. 

It certainly has a tendency of removing the “caste” feeling which our 
Lord so greatly deplored, and which the act before us so greatly wounded. 
We are living in an age of service, a service of love for mankind, and it is 
the opini»n of many eminent men that it has never been equaled in its com- 
prehensive love of man. The rich are beginning to realize as never before 
that wealth means more than self-aggrandizement. It means that they, as 


* Vincent: ‘‘ Word Studies in the New Testament ”’,’p. 236.5 


t Ely: ‘‘ Social Aspects of Christianity”, p. 149. 


THE WASHING OF THE DISCIPLES’ FEET. 267 


its possessors, are but stewards to do service for humanity, and so the last 
year surpassed all others in its gifts of beneficence. In this renaissance 
appears the Young Men’s Christian Associa ion, the University Settlements, 
the Students’ Volunteer movement and other methods of helping humanity, 
all of which show that we are catching the spirit of Christ when He laid 
aside His garments, and He took a towel and girded Himself, and poured 
water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet. 

I believe with Dr. Rice that ‘‘the Man of Nazareth has still a message 
even for those who rejoice in the discovery and possession of the new 


29 * 


worlds of truth revealed by modern science ”’. 


* Professor Rice: ‘‘ Christian Faith in an Age of Science”’, p. 6. 


* THE GLORIFICATION OF THE SON OF MAN, 
BY REV. SAMUEL HART, D. D., D. C. L., 


PROFESSOR OF DOCTRINAL THEOLOGY AND OF THE PRAYER BOOK IN BERKELEY 
DIVINITY SCHOOL, MIDDLETOWN, CONN. 


St. JOHN 13:31, 32. 
“ Now is glorified the Son of Man, 
And God is glorified in Him; 


And God shall glorify Him in Himself, 
And straightway shall He glorify Him”. 


St. JOHN 17:5. 


“And now glorify Thou Me, Father, with Thyself, 
By the glory which before the world was I had with Thee”. 


I. As we pass on in the study of St. John’s Gospel, we see more and 
more distinctly how the beloved disciple was led to know the Master 
and to interpret and record His works. Especially as we come under 
the shadow of the cross and catch a glimpse of the light which lies 
beyond it, we see how one of whom we think as most closely following and 
understanding the Lord, learned the meaning of the great revelation of the 
life, the death, and the life resumed. He saw in it all, as he traced it out 
from the beginning, a great progress from God to God, of one who came 
forth from the Father and came into the world, and again left the world 
and went unto the Father. A later Apostle noted the steps of humiliation 
from the assumption of human nature to the acceptance of the death of the 
cross, and then as following upon this the exaltation to the right hand of 
the Father; and as he wrote, St. Paul thought of the glory as a compensa- 
tion for the humiliation and a reward of the obedience. Such, indeed, from 
the standpoint of man it was, and in this way the facts are doubtless 
rightly represented to our minds and rightly understood. But St. John 
looked at these same events as he knew that Christ Himself looked at them, 
and he saw them in the light of the divine plan and counsel; and in their 
Godward aspect he learned that the cross was not an interruption of the 
great work, nor was the Resurrection an undoing of the power of the death, 
or even a recompense for it; from Bethlehem to Olivet, nay, as I was saying, 
from God to God, it was a great progress, the triumphal march of a com- 
batant and conqueror, the revelation of the inherent glory of the Son of God, 
the assumption of the merited glory of the Son of Man. ‘TI, if I be lifted 
up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself”; the Lord spoke these 


* Delivered at the Sixth Conference, held at the Trinity Union Methodist Episcopal Church, 
March 9g, 1904. 
268 


THE GLORIFICATION OF THE SON OF MAN. 269 


words as He entered into the last tremendous conflict, and He spoke them, 
St. John himself tells us, “‘ signifying by what death He was about to die”’; 
but the “lifting up”? was not upon the cross alone; it was that, indeed, 
but it was that as a step in the ascent to the Father. And, in point of fact, 
it is not the Christ dead upon the cross who has drawn and still draws 
humanity to His worship and obedience; it is the Christ in heaven, “the 
Lamb as it had been slain’’, the accepted sacrifice, the living priest, the 
head over all things to the church. 

And this expression of one of the greatest of all truths, although we 
find it most clearly stated in the argument and the words of St. John’s 
Gospel, is not peculiar to him. St. Luke, when entering upon his long 
record of the events of our Lord’s last journey to Jerusalem, says that He 
steadfastly set His face thitherward ‘‘ when the time was come that He 
should be received up’’; so that he, too, looked upon the way of the cross - 
as the way of glory. And there are many phrases which show that even 
St. Paul wrote sometimes more like a mystic than like a scholastic 
theologian, and centering his thoughts upon God saw the one great plan 
which was purposed from eternal ages, not interrupted but furthered by 
the cross. 

Thus, indeed, it must have been for all who entered into the full mean- 
ing of the Lord’s teaching about Himself. They saw the childhood, the 
youth, the opening manhood of the holy Man follow in the wonderful 
naturalness of perfection ; there was no change of purpose, no break of con- 
tinuity, when upon them there followed the public ministry with its gracious 
teaching and its deeds of love, its conflicts with sin and error, its mighty 
testimony to this truth; and they saw that it was a step to the greatest vic- 
tory when the life submitted to death that it might gain new power, that it 
might enter upon a loftier state of existence, and that it should then be 
communicated to those who could receive it. Christ Jesus lived and taught, 
suffered and died, that He might attain and impart the new life. 

Thus it was that when, His earthly ministry having ended, He had dedi- 
cated Himself to death, He knew and declared that He had reached the 
time of His glorification. He had shown Himself to be the Lamb without 
blemish and without spot; He had, before the hands of wicked men had 
been violently laid upon Him, devoted Himself to death when He presented 
to the Father the bread and the wine of the last Paschal feast and the first 
Eucharist, or at least—for we cannot be certain of the exact sequence of 
events—He was about to offer this great sacrifice of Himself and to bid His 
disciples to continue a memorial of it until He should come again; Judas 
had left that little company, in which he no longer had his place, and had 
gone out into the night to fulfil the awful part which he had chosen for him- 
self; and Jesus said to the eleven who were left, waiting in hope and fear 
for what might prove the issues of that night, ‘‘ Now is the Son of Man 
glorified”. A day or two before, when the conflict with His own people 
was at its height, and Gentiles had come to ask for Him, He had said that 
the hour of His glorification was at hand; but now the sacrifice was in true 


270 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


symbol and in full intent offered, or to be offered, and the Lord spoke of 
the act as just completed: ‘‘ Now was glorified the Son of Man”’. 

II. ‘The Son of Man”. Thus He spoke of Himself, as showing the 
place which He held in the great economy of the Father, declaring His 
identity with humanity and His place as the head of humanity, affirming 
that He was really man and at the same time representatively man, not one 
among men but one who was the life of all, who was the one real man 
because He was the one ideal man. And He, the Son of Man, was now 
ready to receive a glory such as had never reached humanity before. He 
saw before Him the agony in the garden and the bloody sweat; He knew 
how near to Him were the cross and the passion, with all that they meant 
of shame and pain, of contempt and dereliction; but He saw beyond them, 
and—-most important—because of them, the mighty resurrection and the 
glorious ascension, the enthronement in heaven and the kingly return; He 
knew, too, that this was the true way—we need not hesitate to say the 
natural way—in which He, the Son of Man, was to complete His work and 
to attain His destined place; and He uttered in the hearing of His apostles 
words which they could not rightly understand then, but words which it 
was impossible that they should forget: 


“ Now was glorified the Son of Man, 
And God was glorified in Him; 
And God shall glorify Him in Himself, 
And straightway shall He glorify Him”. 


These were not, then, the words of a perfect man who, coming to the 
end of his appointed work, felt that he might expect a reward. Even the 
perfect man must, indeed,—paradoxical as it may seem—advance in his 
perfection. Even the perfect man must meet the conditions of advance in 
physical and mental and spiritual development, and must prove his place 
and stand forth as being that which he really is. Even the perfect man 
must be perfect because he has become perfect, and none can be made per- 
fect without trials and sufferings. And Jesus Christ was certainly perfect 
as man, and His humanity was made perfect. - None before Him had ever 
attained to unspotted holiness, as none before Him had ever offered com- 
plete obedience. He stood pre-eminent among all who have ever trod this 
earth in the many generations of its history, and as such there must have 
been a glory especially and peculiarly His. That glory, if I understand the 
record aright, was shown to Him on one memorable occasion; and had He 
been no more than man, had He been but one among the millions of human 
kind, He might have accepted it as His due and have entered upon it then. 
On the holy mount, when not only His life of preparation was past, but 
also He had received the discipline and made the progress which belonged 
to His public ministry, His glory was revealed to chosen men of both the 
ancient and the new dispensation, and also (I think we may rightly say it) 
to Himself. That glory our Lord did not then accept, and its vision faded 
away; but it left in the memory and the convictions of two apostles who. 


THE GLORIFICATION OF THE SON OF MAN. 271 


saw it—the other early laid down his life and left no record of his teach- 
ing—a powerful testimony as to the reality and the might of their Master’s 
majesty, whom they had for a brief moment seen zs indeed He was and is. 
But the Lord came down from the mount, and entered again and at once 
upon His work as the healer of men’s woes, and presently upon His other 
work as teacher and His conflict with sin. He accepted not the transfigu- 
ration glory which belonged to Him as man, because He would await and in 
due time gain the resurrection glory, which should be His as the Son of 
Man. The hour was not yet come that the Son of Man should be glorified. 

III. Now the reason for this, as I understand it, is two-fold; or, to 
speak more accurately, it is a reason which can be stated and considered in 
two ways. Our Lord at the time of the transfiguration had accomplished 
the work of man, as man might have been had there been no need of 
redemption. He had, indeed, encountered sin, and had known its opposi- 
tion, and had removed some of its results; but He had not delivered men 
from its power, nor had He as yet known in His own experience the utter- 
most of the power of that which He had come to bear. If the words are 
rightly understood, it may be said that He had fulfilled the destiny of man 
unfallen, but not as yet that of man fallen. For, though He knew no sin, 
and the stain and corruption incurred by human nature did not reach to 
Him, yet He was sent ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin”; and it 
was necessary that His holiness should reach down and take hold of the 
weakness and sin of those whom He vouchsafed to call His brethren. To’ 
help man fallen, He must humble Himself to the destiny of man fallen ; and 
that He would not have done if He had accepted the glory of perfect man- 
hood and entered the presence of the Father from the mount of the trans- 
figuration. And this really implies the other reason which I had in mind, 
that even in the supreme hour of His ministry, regarded as only His minis- 
try, Christ had not identified Himself with us; He had not become the 
head of the church, and through the church the head of mankind. The life 
of no mere man, be he even the man who alone should be perfect among 
the children of men, could be communicated to all others as the one source 
of their true life. None but a mere man could have accepted a glory which 
was not to be shared with others; none but the Son of Man could have 
left the vision of the spiritual world and of the eternal life, and calmly faced 
the evils and sorrows that remained on earth, and turned His steps to 
Gethsemane and Calvary, even though it was with sure faith that through 
them a path would be found to the opened grave and the parted heavens. 
Christ our Lord, because He was the Son of Man, must needs seek to tread 
as deliverer the way along which man, weak and fallen, was stumbling, and 
He must needs gain for man a life not only perfect but victorious; and life 
completely victorious—we may be not able to give the reason, but we are 
convinced of the truth—is the only high life which is by its nature communi- 
cable to others and able to extend to all. And no life is completely victo- 
rious except that which bows itself down to death and rises again in the 
might of the resurrection. 


272 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


IV. Transfiguration glory was therefore not all that was meet for the 
Son of Man. Because He was the Son of Man, He would not accept that 
which could not be shared with His brethren; because He was the Son of 
Man, He would not enter into glory without us. He came back into this 
world’s life that He might take us with Himself into the life of the world to 
come. How, then, was He to be glorified as the Son of Man? 

The answer has been already in part suggested; but that it may be 
truly stated and apprehended, we must keep in our minds the full meaning 
of glory as the word is used constantly in the Scriptures. 

Glory is the manifestation of that which has a moral worth; it belongs 
only to that which is in itself real and true; it is the necessary effulgence of 
light, the revelation of true excellence, that by which a rational being recog- 
nizes in a rational being the qualities of holiness and reality, of justice and 
love, and of all that goes to make up moral and spiritual perfection. It is 
thus essential to the nature of that to which it belongs and which it reveals ; 
it may be hindered in its manifestation, but it cannot be created and it can- 
not be destroyed. It follows that it is not, and cannot be, something 
extraneous, as a golden crown which may be put upon an unworthy head, 
or a Stately garment which may be used to cover up rags and unseemliness ; 
glory, in any right sense of the word, is as necessary to him in whom it is 
seen as is brightness to the sun, or beauty to the flower, or order to the 
system of the universe. And in a true sense we may say that God Himself 
does not bestow glory. We do not, of course, mean that He does not first 
create that which is noble and pure and true; we do not for a moment deny 
that it is His hand which shapes and His spirit which gives life to all that 
bas perfection of any kind, or that even makes any approach to perfection ; 
but as He did not first create the sun or the flower or the world, and then 
give to each its attribute of brightness or beauty or order, but made each 
to show in itself that which belonged to its very constitution, so it is in 
regard to that moral excellence of which we are speaking; it does of very 
necessity reveal itself, it cannot but be glorious. The glory of God is His 
holiness and His love, those two elements which specially enter into our 
thought of what we venture to call His character; and the holy and loving 
God must needs have the glory which enters into any true conception of 
holiness and love, a glory which none can fail to see and recognize who 
knows these divine attributes. In like manner, the glory of a man is in his 
character as he is true to that which he was created to be and to the ideal 
toward which he was meant to advance; and even with our bodily eyes we 
catch traces of it on the faces of the saints, and our souls are conscious of 
it when we are in their presence. So the glory of the Son of Man is to be 
seen in the completion of His work, in the perfection which He was to 
attain through life and death and life again, through obedience and its 
reward, by completing as Son of Man His double service, that of the Father 
and that of His brethren. 

The words, then, on the Lord’s lips, ‘‘ Now is the Son of Man glorified”’, 
declared that He had as Son of Man finished His work here and had fulfilled 


THE GLORIFICATION OF THE SON OF MAN. 273° 


the destiny of man on earth. They witnessed to the completion of that for 
which He had cast in His lot with those whom, though fallen and sinful, 
He had from very love called to become His brethren. Dedicating Him- 
self to death, and accepting the path of life along which alone He could 
lead man with Himself, He had made that great act of self-surrender which 
was the only way of true victory for Him and for us, and had acknowledged 
that in this He would find His sufficient reward. The inward victory had 
been gained in the surrender of the holy will to do and to suffer all that man 
needed to accomplish and to endure; and upon the inward victory, so the 
Lord knew, the outward triumph must follow. 

Thus, as in one great act, the Son of Man was glorified by life and by 
death, by resurrection and ascension, and is yet to be glorified by that 
return for which His church is waiting. Thus in the self-surrender and the 
deserved exaltation, a death accepted because only through it could life 
be attained, life possible only as springing out of death, did He who had 
for our sakes identified Himself with us fulfil His destiny and ours. Thus 
did He gain His true reward, the reward of greater service and of greater 
consequent honor, the ability to serve us by giving us His resurrection life 
as He had given for us the life in which He lived on earth. Thus, to use 
His own words, was He glorified, and God was glorified in Him; for in His 
work was a new revelation of the Father, made known in His wonderful 
perfections of holiness and love; and thus was fulfilled that which He added 
by way of emphasis and assurance, ‘“‘God shall glorify Him in Himself, and 
straightway shall He glorify Him”. They are words rather for devout 
meditation than for critical examination and exposition; and marvellously 
do they tell us of the eternal Son of God, as Son of Man, bringing glory to 
the Father, and the Father glorifying His only begotten Son, when His 
work as Son of Man was completed, in Himself. 

And somewhat thus may we venture to apprehend the meaning of the 
petition which I read at the beginning from the Lord’s high-priestly 
prayer; “‘Now glorify Thou Me, Father, by the glory which before the 
world was I had with Thee”. The words in which the eternal Son, who 
had come forth from the Father, addressed the eternal Father to whom He 
was about to return, must needs be words above the full understanding of 
men; but they do at least contain the prayer, which on the Lord’s lips was 
a prayer in full assurance that it was the Father’s will that it should be ful- 
filled—the prayer that He who had been made and had become the Son 
of Man, might in His perfection as the God-Man, uniting in His one 
Person two natures never to be divided, have the glory which belonged 
to the God-head; that the glory which before the Incarnation had been 
His, might be given Him as the Incarnate Son, who by the depth of 
His humiliation and the completeness of His obedience had gained for 
Himself the name that is above every name, and for man the privilege of 
becoming the son of God and even partaker of the divine nature. What 
one says in trying to grasp the meaning of these great words must needs 
be said after the manner of men and most imperfectly; but the thought 


274 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


inspired may lead to worship and to that lofty faith which is the spring of 
all true action. : 

V. Thus, as He had declared and as He had prayed, the Son of God, 
made Son of Man, was glorified by the Father as in the path of the Cross 
He entered upon the life which had hitherto been the uncommunicated life 
of the Godhead, to make it communicable to men. Thus did He gain a 
victory, not for Himself alone, but for all who should be in Him, for His 
body the church, and for all humanity. Thus did He not only point out 
the way of man’s perfection, but prove it a real thing; thus did He make it 
possible for us to enter into His perfection and into His glory. 


*OBEDIENCE TO THE NEW COMMANDMENT THE PROOF OF 
DISCIPLESHIP. 


(St. JOHN 13:34, 35.) 
BY REV. ROCKWELL H. POTTER, 


PASTOR OF THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, HARTFORD, CONN. 


BRETHREN IN THE CONFERENCE: You have asked me to speak upon 
the words found in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John in the 
thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth verses, ‘‘A new commandment I give unto you, 
that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one 
another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have 
love one to another’. Those who have read thoughtfully these chap- 
ters of the Gospel will have noted that the chapter division which con- 
cludes the thirteenth and opens the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel 
gives to us at the opening of the fourteenth chapter those great words 
of comfort which are dear to the heart of every Christian. Yet it is 
unhappy in that it separates those words of Jesus from the other words in 
His answer to the question of Peter, and that it separates the related ques- 
tions of Thomas and Philip and Judas from the question of Peter. They 
will have noted that the real division of the thought occurs at the thirty- 
sixth verse of the thirteenth chapter with the first of the interrupting 
questions. So we see these verses to which our thought is called this 
evening standing as Jesus’ own word at the conclusion of the institution of 
the Lord’s Supper and as His only introduction to the great words of the 
fifteenth to the seventeenth chapters—the discourse of the vine and His 
prayer for the church. So that I bring to you one of His great words 
spoken at a great moment in His ministry. 

The supper had been instituted. That simple yet profound ceremony 
summed up in itself great Christian truths that laid hold of the thought and 
heart of the group of disciples. At its close in that tragic moment Jesus 
had made the delicate disclosure of him who should betray Him, and the 
steps of Judas had just died away as he had descended the stair from the 
upper room. It is as though we had crossed the passion threshold and 
were now in the great and holy place wherein was to be enacted the sub- 
lime mystery of the Christian faith —as though the traitor being unable to 
pass that threshold having just departed, had left behind him the group of 
the disciples whose hearts were loyal to Jesus and to whom could be dis- 
closed the great and eternal truths which were then to be wrought out. So 


* Delivered at the Sixth Conference, held at the Trinity Union Methodist Episcopal Church, March 
9, 1904. 


275 


276 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Jesus speaks now the word which is to be the constituting principle of 
the Christian church. The supper being concluded He speaks of the glo- 
rification of the Son of Man which is to be wrought in Him, speaking of His 
relation to God. Then He speaks of the Church through which He is to be 
glorified, and announces the principle which is to constitute that Church in 
human society —the principle which is to organize human society so that 
the great work to which He has laid His hand shall find its full fruition in 
the brotherhood of man. This then is His word. ‘A new commandment 
I give unto you that you love one another, as I have loved you; that you also 
love one another. By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, 
because ye have love one for another ”’. 

What then is the content of this great commandment which is 
to become the organizing principle of the Christian Church? What 
then is the content of this commandment by which men are to be 
known as His disciples? We read the word, “that ye love one another”, 
and we recognize that this is no new word falling from the lips of Jesus. 
The disciples had already heard that message. Time and time again had 
He repeated the ancient command of Israel in their ears. Moreover, in 
the parable of the Good Samaritan He had given such large interpretation 
to the word neighbor that they understood something of the breadth of the 
love that was demanded of them by Jesus. What then constitutes this 
command, ‘“ A zew commandment?” Wherein is it that Jesus speaks these 
words on the threshold ot His passion? Wherein is it that, reserving this 
word for this moment, He speaks of it and says, ‘‘ This is the zew com- 
mand”? “TI have stated many things. If you forget other things which I 
have said, forget not this. I have given many precepts. If these all fall 
from your lives, let not thisfall. This is #4ecommandment”. Whatdoes He 
mean? Let us divest our thought of those unworthy conceptions that cluster 
around these words. A large part of the meaning of the passage we are apt 
to lose. We love so many things. We speak of that which is beautiful to 
the artistic sense and say that we love it because it is a delight to the eye, 
or pleasant to the ear, or because in deeper meaning it satisfies the esthetic 
impulses of the soul. Again, with more of real meaning we say of our 
friend, ‘‘I love him; he is my companion, my trusted friend, I love him”. 
Yet we know that love such as this cannot be commanded. Or leaving 
behind the lower meanings of the word, we apply it to that range of affec- 
tion upon which the home is constituted, the love of husband for wife, of 
father for son, the love of the mother for her child, and by this word we 
cover all the range of those sacred relationships which constitute the home 
and give unto life the sweetness and richness which there is in the home 
we know. And yet, when we strive to interpret these words by these usages 
of it, we find that it is impossible for us to derive from it the significance of 
the text. We cannot be commanded so to love all men, we cannot be 
commanded so to love our brethren in the Christian Church. These affec- 
tions which are the center and bond of union in the home, are not the 
range of affections that are brought into play in the Christian brotherhood. 


OBEDIENCE TO THE NEW COMMANDMENT. 277 


They cannot be commanded, and our Lord never laid that commandment 
upon us. How then shall we interpret these words but by reading more 
closely, and by comparing this word here with those in the parable of Jesus 
by which He has borne it in upon the heart of humanity? We love our 
neighbor when we, like the good Samaritan, are willing not to pass by 
on the other side but to go where he is, and put the arm of sympathy under 
his wounded head, and to lift him in his weakness to the bosom of our 
strength, and to pour the balm of comfort into his wounds, and to bear him to 
safety and shelter. We find that we love our neighbor when thus we seek 
his good,—that Jesus does not command for us a passionate affection, that 
He does not command us to find the man robbed and at once feel towards 
him as we feel towards our brother in the flesh; but that we enter into his 
life with sympathy and seek his welfare and minister unto him in love. So 
Jesus means in this great word, “that ye love one another”, as He means 
always in the interpretation of that great word to Israel. Jesus means, 
when He says you should love one another, ‘seek always the welfare of 
your brother”. Consistently in life and word, in deed and thought, seek 
the welfare of that brother. “‘Ah”’, you say, “‘ you have taken the meaning out 
of that great word, what is there left in it?” Have I? Then you have 
never striven to live up to that commandment; take it home and live up to 
it in Providence for one week, and see if the meaning is gone from it when 
I say that Jesus says we shall always seek the welfare of our brother man. 
This is the commandment that Jesus lays upon the heart of the Christian 
Church, and He utters the great and fundamental law of redeemed human 
society. 

But He has given us here the phrase that makes His word the ez 
commandment, “ Love one another as I have loved you”. And so saying, 
He has given us the type and measure of the Christian obligation. “As I 
have loved you”. How loved He men? Spiritually first, spiritually, always 
spiritually. But you say, “‘He fed the hungry, He clothed the naked, He 
unstopped the deaf ears, and He caused light to shine in the eyes of the 
darkened, He made the lame to walk and the dead to live; His ministry 
was a physical ministry’. Yes, He fed the hungry, but He said to them, 
“Ve seek Me because you ate of the loaves and fishes and were full”; 
‘Labor not for the meat which perisheth but for the meat which endureth 
unto life eternal”. ‘‘ But you are taking all the kindness and sympathy 
out of the gospel’’, some one exclaims. No, I amnot. God forbid that I 
should utter a word which should be interpreted to mean that I say unto 
my brother, ‘‘ Go, be ye clothed and fed”’ while I turn about to put on my 
broadcloth coat and eat my dinner of roast beef, while he walks naked and 
hungry! But this is true that in all our ministry for the welfare of our 
brethren, it is the welfare of their lives that we seek and not the welfare of 
their bodies. You think of him, notasa beast; you think of him asa child of 
God. You seek constantly his welfare, you love to put clothes upon his back, 
you love to heal his wounds, you love to make the lame to leap and the blind 
to see, but you will do this because by so ministering, you serve his whole 


278 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


life and you redeem his soul. The Christian Church must always assert 
that her love for men is spiritual as was the love of Jesus. 

To what point are we to love our neighbor? Upto the point of sacri- 
fice. That is what Jesus did. ‘Love one another as I have loved you”. 
Seek always, consistently, the welfare of your brother’s life, and seek it 
until it hurts. That is what Jesus means, uf /o the point of sacrifice. “As I 
have loved you’’, said Jesus when the shadow of Gethsemane was falling 
upon His brow, and when there was graven before Him in feature of flame, 
the dread figure of the cross. And by this He teaches His Church that 
they are to love their fellowmen. The Church is to show her love for 
humanity by loving their lives, and loving their lives to the point of sacri- 
fice—that is the meaning given by the new commandment. Because we 
have divested it of those associations of sentiment and of affection which 
cluster around the word in our ordinary usage of it, will you not bear wit- 
ness with me that we have deepened and strengthened its claim upon the 
human heart, when we have interpreted it to mean, “ Thou shalt consist- 
ently seek the welfare of thy brothers’s life up to the point of sacrifice”? 

It was a solemn moment when Jesus spoke that word. He reserved 
it until the traitor, Judas, had gone out, because only faithful souls could 
bear the blaze of the white heat of that new commandment. It is the solemn 
command which Jesus gives to the Christian Church in every age. ‘Thou 
shalt always seek the welfare of thy brother’s life, his spiritual life, up to the 
point of sacrifice”. Itis a claim that stands in the world today, a claim 
that has in it a divine compulsion. ‘‘ Thou shalt love one another”. ‘ That 
ye love one another as I have loved you”’. 

Oh, but you say: “It is limited. It was just Andrew, Peter and James 
and John and Philip and Thomas and the rest of them, that were to love one 
another. It did not mean the Roman soldiers in the street. It did not 
mean the centurions; it did not mean the scribes and Pharisees”. Jesus 
was speaking to His disciples. But with the full light of these twenty cen- 
turies blazing in upon those words, with Jesus’ own teaching by precept 
and proverb as He has, interpreted the ancient command of Israel, we 
know that wrapped up in that ‘“‘ you” was potentially the human race. It 
takes in all mankind. And who dares to draw a circle of limitation around 
the command of Jesus and say we shall love this one as He loved us but 
that one is outside of the Church and we need not practice the law towards 
him. The scope of His command was potentially universal. And in this 
age the Church must give her allegiance to the universal command or the 
world will laugh her to scorn. Save as we learn to love humanity as Jesus 
loved us, spiritually, sacrificially, we deny the word of our Lord. Jesus 
knew human nature, He knew that He could not command His disciples to 
have affection for the stranger, for the foreigner, the man of different tem- 
perament, but He knew He could command them always to seek consistently 
his welfare. I cannot command you to love the man who lives across the 
street from you. His education and training are different from yours. All 
his interests and sympathies are different from yours. I may not ask you to 


OBEDIENCE TO THE NEW COMMANDMENT. 279 


love him as you love your brother, but I can ask you to seek always, con- 
sistently, the welfare of that man’s life, even if it hurts you to do it. And 
you can do it, and you know that you can do it. He does not dress as you 
would like him to dress; he is more or less ostentatious in his manner of 
living, but if you always consistently seek his welfare you will find value in 
that man’s life. You will redeem him. You may not put a limit around 
the command of Jesus when you interpret Him fairly; for He includes 
within the scope of it all men. And those people who to you are unpleasant 
and disagreeable are bound up in it. And if your allegiance to Him is from 
the heart, you will recognize His claim, you will see their welfare, and you 
will scorn to do the thing which would injure them. 

What is the design? Why did He give it to His disciples? It was a 
strategic, apologetic and military command. “By this shall all men know 
that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another”. This isthe great 
apologetic of the Christian Church. This is the great weapon of the 
Church’s warfare. Are we asking wherewith shall the Church go forth? 
Are we reading in the papers of great congregations of men who cheer the 
name of Jesus and hiss at the mention of the Christian Church? Are we 
talking about the unchurched masses who live in our cities and are scattered 
upon our plains, and who know the name of Jesus to bow in reverence, but 
who know the Church only to hiss at it? And are we asking wherewith shall 
we meet these men and win them to the Church? Jesus tells us in John 13: 
35 —‘‘ By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one 
to another”. If you love, if you seek consistently their welfare in life to the 
point of sacrifice, they will know that you are His disciples indeed. It will 
be evidence sufficient when they find you at the point of sacrifice seeking 
their welfare and they will be found within the Church of Christ. Why are 
you in the Christian Church? Not because some eloquent man set forth the 
claims of the Scriptures. These are not those who won you to the Christian 
Church, but because you knew a life that loved some one, that sought always 
another’s welfare. Some man who stood in the community a commanding 
figure, the law of whose life was integrity and in whose lips was the law of 
kindness, who sought always the welfare of his brother, who scorned to 
take a dividend on watered stock, if he knew that it was coined out of the 
tears and blood of his brethren; who scorned to speak a word harshly to 
the man who served him because he knew it would injure his spirit; 
such a man you knew always and consistently sought the welfare of his 
brother. It was enough for you. You said of him, ‘“‘He follows Jesus 
of Nazareth and is obedient to His commands”. Or it was some sainted 
woman whose life and ministry bore witness to the sacrifices with which 
her life was poured out for others. She won you into the Christian Church. 
This is Jesus’ plan of campaign. Do you know how to take Providence for 
Christ? Love. Do I know how to take Hartford for Christ? This is His 
pledge. This is His way of evangelism. When the Christian Church fully 
lives out the new commandment, then all men shall know that the Church is 
the Church of Jesus, and all men shall be found within her walls in worship, 
and go forth from her portals in service, for He Himself hath promised it. . 


*MYSTICISM IN THE FOURTEENTH, FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH 
CHAPTERS OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 


BY REV. ALFRED WILLIAMS ANTHONY, D. D., 


PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS AND CRITICISM IN COBB DIVINITY 


SCHOOL, LEWISTON, MAINE. 


Mysticism is a term which has been used to cover, but not to hide, a 
multitude of views and vagaries. Quietism, Pietism and Gichtelianism,— 
strange expressions of religious feeling now well-nigh forgotten—are 
arrayed under the term; the Beghards, the Beguins, the Euchites, the 
Hesychasts, the Illuminati and the Omphalopsychites, who gazed in 
abstraction at their navels, have borne the designation. Good men, too, 
have been classified as mystics, men like Erigena, Eckhart, John Tauler, 
Thomas 4 Kempis and George Fox, the father of the Quakers, disciples of 
the “Inner Light.” Emerson in writing upon representative men, took 
Swedenborg as the type of the mystic. The transcendentalists, even Carlyle 
and Emerson, have been called mystics. Many of our poets are mystics. 

What is mysticism? A dictionary definition gives it as “‘Any mode of 
thought, or phase of intellectual life, in which reliance is placed upon a 
spiritual illumination believed to transcend the ordinary powers of the 
understanding”. The Encyclopedia Britannica declares, ‘“‘ Mysticism is a 
phase of thought, or rather perhaps of feeling, which from its very nature is 
hardly susceptible of exact definition. It appears in connection with the 
endeavor of the human mind to grasp the divine essence or the ultimate 
reality of things, and to enjoy the blessedness of actual communication with 
the Highest”. 

This writer in the Encyclopedia Britannica, Professor Andrew Seth of 
University College, Cardiff, Wales, is not wholly consistent with himself, 

although he consistently describes mysticism. In one column he says, 
' “The type of character to which mysticism is allied is passive, sensuous 
and feminine, rather than independent, masculine and ethically vigorous”’. 
In another column he states, ‘“‘ When a religion begins to ossify into a sys- 
tem of formulas and observances, those who protest in the name of heart- 
religion are not unfrequently known by the name of mystics”, and again, 
‘Mysticism instinctively recedes from formulas that have become stereo- 
typed and mechanical into the perennially fresh experience of the 
individual”. So mysticism may be stigmatized with epithets which are 
uncomplimentary, and at the same time be extolled as the reforming spirit 
which is independent, pervasive and virile. 








* Delivered at the Fifth Conference, held at the Central Baptist Church, February 10, 1904. 


280 


; 


MYSTICISM IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 281 


William Ralph Inge, of Oxford, England, who delivered the Bampton 
Lectures for 1899 on Christian Mysticism, uses expressions like the follow- 
ing in descriptive definitions of mysticism: it is “‘the dim consciousness of 


the deyond, which is part of our nature as human beings”; “a higher 
instinct, perhaps an anticipation of the evolutionary process”’; ‘‘an exten- 
sion of the frontier of consciousness” ; “‘ the voice of God speaking to us”. 


I would define mysticism as the direct cognition of spiritual verities 
without the intervention of the senses on the one hand, or of logical pro- 
cesses of reasoning on the other. 

Can God reveal Himself directly to the human soul? Can man enter 
into immediate communication with the Divine, unaided by external forms 
and symbols? 

It is not my task to attempt now to answer this inquiry either on the 
side of psychology or of philosophy, but by simple exegetical methods to 
show the teaching of the Fourth Gospel in three of the five chapters which 
Canon Bernard considers contain the central teaching of Jesus Christ. 
( The Central Teaching of Jesus Christ”, by Canon T. D. Bernard, Mac- 
millan, 1892.) 

These chapters, the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth, contain the 
Johannine account of the final discourse of our Lord to His apostles. The 
words are spoken in the upper room on the last Thursday evening, after the 
institution of the Lord’s Supper, and the hour probably is tending well 
toward midnight. 

Those apostles still entertained the sensuous conception of the Mes- 
siah’s kingdom. They thought of the Messiah as destined to rule a temporal 
kingdom, as Kings David and Solomon had ruled, though now with greater 
splendor and wider sway. Two of them,—the two who should have under- 
stood Him best,—had come with their mother making request for political 
honors, that one might sit on His right hand and the other on His left in 
His kingdom; they had disputed and quarreled, even in this last meal, 
respecting place and preferment, and the Master, to teach them a lesson in 
humility and service, had girded His loins with a towel and had washed 
their feet. But yet they did not learn, for, two-score days later, they ask, 
“Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Isreal?” thinking 
still of a political reign,—this on the eve of the ascension. 

But now, in that upper room, He gives them sad forebodings; He 
speaks of treachery and betrayal: “ Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one 
of you shall betray Me” (13:21); He declares His departure as at hand, 
‘Little children, yet a little while am I with you; ye shall seek Me, and as 
I said to the Jews, where I go ye cannot come, I say also to you now” 
(13:33); and He predicts the denial of Peter, His staunchest friend and 
their brave leader, ‘‘ Verily, verily, | say to thee, the cock shall not crow 
until thou hast denied Me three times ”’ (13:38). 

These three declarations, of betrayal, of departure, and of denial, dash 
their expectations of Messianic triumph in a physical kingdom,—dash them 
for the time being. If He is treacherously betrayed, if He leaves them 


a 


282 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


alone and they cannot follow, if Peter, foremost of them all, is soon to 
repudiate Him, what can they hope? what can they éxpect? Their hearts 
are heavy,—their hearts are troubled, filled with sorrow and consternation. 
It is against such a background that the mystic utterances of these chapters 
are spoken. 

“Do not let your heart be troubled ’’, said the Master, “‘ ye are believ- 
ing upon God, upon Me also believe” (14:1). The Greek verbs for 
‘‘ believe” here are alike ; both may be in the indicative mode, both may be 
in the imperative mode, or one may be indicative and the other imperative ; 
so far as form is concerned there is nothing decisive; but, since Jews 
believed devoutly in Jehovah,—and they were Jews, pre-eminent in relig- 
ious opportunities,—we doubtless are correct in taking the former asa 
statement of fact, and the latter as a corrective of their trouble and dismay : 
‘Ve are believing upon God; believe also upon Me”, for ye have as good 
reason to rest your confidence upon Me as upon God, My Father. Link 
the invisible with the visible; link the visible with the invisible. In seeing 
Me you see God; and when I go, you then may have as calm confidence in 
Me as you have in the invisible God ; God, the Father, and I are one. 

This is obviously His thought a little further on, when He says, ‘“‘If ye 
had known Me, ye would have known My Father also, and from henceforth 
ye have known Him and have seen Him” (v. 7). And Philip’s protest of 
dull understanding brought out the plainer answer, ‘‘Show us the Father 
and it sufficeth us’’; ‘‘So long a time have I been with you and hast thou 
not known Me, Philip? He who hath seen Me hath seen the Father; how 
sayest thou, show us the Father? Dost thou not believe that I am in the 
Father and the Father in Me?” (vs. 8-10). 

~~» To recognize in the visible the invisible is essentially a mystic act. To 
see God in nature, in man, in Christ, is essentially mysticism; it is the 
pushing of consciousness through the sensuous to the supersensuous; it is 
more than experience, it is discernment; it is more than philosophy, it is 
vision. The incarnation really requires mysticism. 

Though I am betrayed, yet am I unharmed; though I go away, yet do 
I.remain; though you deny Me, yet am I unchanged ;—these are the assur- 
ances of the Christ. 

‘‘T go to prepare a place for you * * * I willcomeagain * * * 
(vs. 2,3). Great errors have been associated with this promise to return. 
Men have looked for a physical advent, and have set days and hours for the 
fleshly Jesus to appear. But it is a mystic act; the promise is for fulfilment 
in a spiritual sense. We have Pauline warrant for asserting that the things 
of the spirit must be spiritually discerned. He went in the flesh; He 
returned in the spirit. It was expedient for the flesh (16:7) to disappear, — 
that they might forget the mere flesh and receive the spirit. 

‘T will ask the Father and He will give you another Comforter, that 
He may be with you forever * * * I will not leave you as orphans, I am 
coming to you” (vs. 16-18). That the Paraclete is spoken of as another 
Comforter plainly implies that Jesus, while in the flesh, was the first Com- 


” 


MYSTICISM IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 283 


forter and that the Paraclete who came was to continue the functions of 
Jesus, though invisible now, as spirit. 

“A little while”,—this caused perplexity because they did not under- 
stand it in the mystic sense,—‘‘ Yet a little while, and the world beholdeth 
Me no more; but ye behold Me: because I live, ye shall live also. In that 
day ye shall know that Iam in the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you” 
(vs. 19, 20);—a mystic union. ‘He that hath My commandments, and 
keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me and he that loveth Me shall be loved 
of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself unto him” 
(v. 21) ;—a mystic union and mystic acts. Against this Judas (not Iscariot) 
expostulated as unintelligible, ‘“‘ Lord, what is come to pass, that Thou wilt 
manifest Thyself unto us and not unto the world?” (v.22.) In the reply of 
Jesus are three mystic acts, love, obedience, union :—‘‘If any man love Me, 
he will keep My word: and My Father will love him, and We will come 
unto him, and make Our abode with him ”’ (v. 23). Love is the projection 
of self toward another being; obedience is the surrender of self to another 
being; and through the outgoing to, and the incoming of, another being a 
mystic union results. 

To the apostles, specific mystic assurances were given. The Master 
went in order to prepare abodes for them. We have read the text, ‘“‘In My 
Father’s house are many mansions” (14:2). The margin of the American 
R. V. gives ‘“‘abiding places’ for mansions. I think the clause well 
rendered by the paraphrase, ‘‘ where My Father lives, there are many abodes 
for you.’”’ Usually we have supposed this referred to heaven and glorious 
habitations therein. But this word for mansions (monaz) is the same word 
rendered ‘‘abode”’ in v. 23 of the same chapter: ‘‘ We will come and make 
our abode with Him”. It is used only these two times in the New Testa- 
ment. Its root is the same as the root of the verb used so many times in 
the 15th chapter, ‘‘abide”’ (meno), ‘‘except the branch abide in the vine; 
abide in Me”, etc. Where My Father is, there are abiding places for you. 
This is not the promise of a far distant future glory but of present fellow- 
ship and safety for the immediate future and for all the hereafter. While I 
go in the flesh, yet I but the better prepare for your spiritual safety in union 
with the divine. 

To the apostles greater works are promised (14:12) because of this 
mystic union; to them the inseparable divine presence is assured; God 
comes and abides; the Comforter will abide; they may abide in Christ, 
drawing sustenance and strength from Him as a branch depends upon its 
vine. The verb to abide occurs ten times in the first ten verses of the 
fifteenth chapter. Though He goes away, yet union with Him is still possi- 
ble. That is the emphasis of these chapters. 

This teaching has a bearing on the doctrine of the trinity set forth and 
implied in these chapters. The Holy Spirit seems to be the name of God 
in this mystic relation. God is in Jesus; note such passages as these: 
“Believe in God, believe also in Me” (14: 1); ‘“‘he that hath seen Me hath 
seen the Father” (14: 9); ‘‘the Father, who abideth in Me, He doeth the 


284 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


works” (14: 10); ‘‘ believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in 
Me” (14: 11). The Father and the Son are with the disciples. See passages 
like these: ‘In that day (this little while) ye shall know that Iam in My 
Father and ye are in Me and I in you” (14: 20); “if any one love Me, he 
will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him 
and make Our abode with him (14: 23). The Holy Spirit is with the 
disciples; Jesus said, “I will send Him” (15: 26), and the Father would 
send Him (14: 26); He will lead into all truth (16: 13) ; He will convict the 
world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment (16: 8-11). The Father, the 
Son and the Spirit abide in union with the disciples. 

Let us recapitulate the thought of the Master which undergird these 
chapters: 

1. The betrayal is at hand. The divine can be delayed, but not 
thwarted, because the divine does not depend upon the flesh. 

2. Peter may deny, yet this is but an episode, not the conclusion. 

3. The Master will leave them,—yes, in the flesh; but even more fully 
does He remain with them in the spirit. It was expedient for Him to go, in 
order that they might the more clearly see Him, not as king, nor priest, nor 
prophet, not as the Messiah long expected, but as God, immortal, eternal, 
more than earth can contain, more than flesh can reveal or the senses per- 
ceive. There was no separation; after the garden, and after the trial, after 
Calvary there was the opportunity for the closer, the real union with Him. 

Such appears to be the main import of these three chapters. Union in 
a spiritual sense is the key word. 

We may well inquire now, whether this is the mysticism of Jesus or of 
John. Has the subjective element of this Fourth Gospel so thrust itself 
forward in these chapters as to color completely the phrasing and the con- 
ception and consequently distort the teaching of Jesus? Is this the mind of 
Jesus which we here find? or is it the thought of the author? Has the 
writer stepped into the Teacher’s place? Does he lay words on the Master’s 
lips? 

Three simple answers may be given: 

é 1. The description of Thomas and Philip in these chapters accords 

with all other descriptions given of them; and it is but fair to assume that 
if fidelity and consistency exist in the lesser details they exist also in the 
main features of the narrative. 

The Thomas who here says, “‘ how can we know the way?” is as slow of 
discernment as the Thomas, who, in the synoptic narrative, must needs put 
his finger in the nail-prints and thrust his hand into the wounded side. 

The Philip who here exclaims, ‘‘ show us the Father and it sufficeth us”’, 
is the man of practical affairs, who sees material things, the man unto whom 
certain Greeks, seeking Jesus, found readiest access, and the man who, off- 
hand, could quickly compute the amount of bread and the cost for feeding 
five thousand people. 

2. Such mysticism as we find here is present also in substance in the 
Synoptic Gospels. The Sermon on the Mount, though largely practical, yet 


MYSTICISM IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 285 


is permeated with mystical elements. The beatitudes have such elements 
as this: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”. The 
great judgment, recorded by Matthew, recognizes a mystical service, which, 


while not at the time apprehended, is nevertheless real: ‘‘ Inasmuch as ye 
have done it unto one of the least of these, My brethren, ye have done it 
unto Me”’. 


“Lo, Iam with you all the days, even unto the end of the world”’, is 
the promise of the Great Commission,—the assurance of a mystic union, 
repeated in the words, ‘‘ where two or three are gathered together in My 
name, there am [I in their midst”’. 

In the synoptic narrative Jesus repeatedly exhorts him that hath an ear 
to hear, to hear,—that is, to hear more than is said in mere phrase, to under- 
stand the principle and to enter into the spiritual sense. 

3. In all the Gospels, the immediate presence of God is the special 
message of Jesus. He is our Father; He cares for us; He knows even the 
hairs of our heads; not a sparrow falls to the ground without His notice, 
and His solicitude for us is even greater and more constant. 

—— >. Really, the religion of Jesus Christ, like every religion which is more 
than mere casuistry or ethics, has mystical aspects and elements. It points 
to the unseen as real; insists upon a spiritual presence, unknown through 
the senses, unperceived by reason alone. 

A mysticism, such as we find in these three chapters, is the Christian 
mysticism especially suited to the needs of our day. A few considerations 
will make this apparent: 

This is pre-eminently a commercial age, when materialism, not as a phil- 
osophy—that is past—but as a method of life, is dominant. To offset it, 
stress must be laid upon the unseen as the most real and the most valuable. 

Transitions in progress today in church and theology tend toward and 
demand a rational mysticism. The doctrine of inspiration in its dynamic 
form now becoming prevalent, thinks not of impartation from external 
sources so much of an internal illumination which opens inward vision. 
According to the modern view, now widely prevailing, the Bible is regarded 
as a record of what man has discovered respecting God,—a record of how 
God has touched man and of man’s comprehension of that contact,—mystic 
relations more or less perfect of which man has been in varying degrees 
conscious. The distinction between things sacred and things secular tends 
to vanish because of a mysticism extending amongst men. To the Jew, 
who saw little more than things of sense, one place (the temple), one day 
(the Sabbath) and one portion of possessions (a tithe) were holy. Now we 
are recognizing all places, all times and all possessions as essentially holy, 
because of the invisible, mystically recognized. Men are beginning to 
learn that God is everlasting and that fellowship with Him and service unto 
Him should be continuous. Indeed we are beginning fairly to accept the 
doctrine of the immanence of God: “He is not far from every one of us; 
in Him we live, move and have our being”’; He occupies all space, is ever- 
present, and is excluded not even from His finite creatures. 


286 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Perhaps some of these tendencies might lead one legitimately to philo- 
sophical monism ; but this is certain: a recognition of the validity of mysti- 
cism, if we keep ourselves back from reliance upon mere feeling and the 
weird imaginings of disordered brains, may prompt us to push the frontier 
of consciousness further out into the infinite, to keep the heart holy in order 
that we may discover therein the image of its divine maker, to see in the 
visible the invisible, and in the vision find grounds for confidence and hope, 
even when misfortune and disaster impend or overwhelm us. If we are in 
fellowship with the divine, we may breathe the pure atmosphere of heaven, 
even while still on the earth. 

“As, in life’s best hours, we hear 
By the spirit’s finer ear 
His low voice within us, thus 
The All-Father heareth us; 
And His holy ear we pain 
With our noisy words and vain. 
Not for Him our violence 
Storming at the gates of sense, 
His the primal language, His 
The eternal silences”. 

— Whittier, “The Prayer of Agassiz”. 


* JESUS THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER. 
(St. JOHN 14:6-11.) 
BY REV. HENRY C. SHELDON, S. T. D., 


PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY IN BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF 


THEOLOGY, Boston, Mass. 


Stress upon revelation, or the disclosure of truth, is especially charac- 
teristic of the Fourth Gospel and the Epistles, which, together, form the 
proper Johannine group of writings. Revelation is rated therein not merely 
as a means of intellectual illumination, but still more as a means of moral 
and spiritual transformation. The office of Jesus as a revealer is empha- 
sized, and a large part of His redemptive agency is located in His imparta- 
tion of truth. He is described as the true light which lighteth every man, 
the light of the world, in following whom men shall escape from darkness 
and have the light of life (1:9; 8:12). He is the manifested truth and the 
manifested life (14:6; 1 John 1:2). The true knowledge, in which lies eter- 
nal life, is mediated through Him (17:3, 4; 1:18; 14:9). His economy is 
an economy of truth as well as of grace (1:17). To this end came He into 
the world, that He might bear witness to the truth (18:37). Heisa bearer 
of life as a messenger of truth; His words are words of eternal life (6:68). 
While His flesh is described as the bread given for the life of the world, 
the explanation is added: “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profit- 
eth nothing ; the words I have spoken unto you they are spirit and are life”’ 
(6:63). The message of truth is thus identified with the meat which the 
Son of Man giveth and which abideth unto eternal life (6:27). A like 
efficacy is assigned to His message in the declaration to the disciples: 
‘‘Already ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you” 
(15:3). He cleanses by the virtue of His word. And this office of a saving 
disclosure of truth is not confined within the limits of His earthly life. 
The Spirit sent in His name has the work of vitalizing in men’s souls the 
revelation given in and through Him. The specific function of the Com- 
forter is to take of the things of Christ and show them unto men (16:7-15). 
Thus a mighty stress falls upon the element of revelation. Doubtless it 
was not in the mind of John to ignore the element of atonement, the worth 
of the supreme sacrifice of Christ as a fundamental and conditioning factor 
in the economy of grace. In referring to Jesus as the Lamb of God, and 
in speaking of Him as dying for the people, he gives expression in his Gos- 
pel to that element. Even more explicitly he refers to it in the Epistle in 


* Delivered at the Seventh Conference, held at the Central Congregational Church, April 13, 1904. 


287 


288 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


naming Jesus Christ the propitiation for the sins of the world. Still, the 
more frequent reference is to the transcendent agency of Christ in making 
known the truth. With full warrant, we may say that, according to the 
Johannine representation, Christ came into the world as a truth-radiating 
personality, and fulfilled in large part His saving office as a bearer and 
impersonation of the truth. 

With logical propriety, John makes the summit of the revealing work 
of Jesus to consist in the disclosure of the infinite Father. As the only- 
begotten Son, dwelling in the paternal bosom, and dwelling also in the 
visible flesh, He declares the unseen Father and makes Him known by a 
superlative and authentic message (1:14, 18). By the work accomplished 
in His earthly vocation He glorifies the Father (17:4). He is the way to 
the Father, the sole means of true access to inner and saving fellowship 
with Him (14:6, 13, 23). So fully does He reveal] the Father that He is 
qualified to say, ‘‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father” (15:9; 
2S 7 Ls) 

The character and activities through which Jesus furnishes the full 
revelation of the Father, though not discussed in the Johannine writings 
after the manner of a dogmatic treatise, are intimated quite positively and 
fully. First of all under this category is to be placed the holy humanity of 
Jesus. While John, it is true, does not assert in so many words that Jesus 
possessed complete manhood, he affords ground for inferring that he recog- 
nized this truth. He assigns to the Master the full complement of sensibil- 
ities, affections and experiences which belong to the proper human subject. 
He declares explicitly that He came in the flesh, and denounces the oppo- 
site opinion as the warped and wicked contention of antichrist. “The 
Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (1:14). ‘‘ Every spirit that con- 
fesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit 
which confesseth not Jesus is not of God” (1 John 4:2, 3). ‘“‘ Many deceiv- 
ers are gone forth into the world, even they that confess not that Jesus 
Christ cometh in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist” 
(2 John 7). Affirmations of this order, it is to be granted, are not distinct 
assertions of the complete manhood of Jesus, but they point in that direc- 
tion. For, in the dialect of the writer, ‘“ flesh’ is capable of a larger refer- 
ence than to the mere body. In at least one instance it is used where the 
term men might have been employed (17:2). There is a suggestion, there- 
fore, that in John’s thought the incarnation, or the coming in the flesh, may 
have been understood to imply the assumption of manhood in its entirety. 
And this suggestion is confirmed by the application to Jesus of the designa- 
tion “Son of Man” (5:27;6:27,62). Whatever may be the primary or 
foremost association of this term, it would not naturally have been applied 
to a personality that was not conceived to be genuinely implicated in the 
race or truly participant of human nature. 

That the humanity in Jesus was perfectly pure and guiltless was evi- 
dently the staunch conviction of John. He represents Him as claiming to 
be entirely void of unrighteousness and as doing always the things pleasing 


JESUS THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER. 289 


to the Father (7: 18; 8:29). Moreover, he pens the unqualified declaration: 
“Ye know that He was manifested to take away sins; and in Himis no sin”’ 
(« John, 3:5). With John, as with the other New Testament writers, the 
complete sinlessness of Jesus was the axiom prefixed to the whole doctrine 
of salvation. 

Now an exceptional humanity like this is fitted to be in an exceptional 
sense a mirror of the divine. It reflects the higher realities as the calm, 
clear water takes the image of the sky. In the unsullied soul of Jesus, there 
was opportunity for divine thought, will, purpose and disposition to be 
pictured in authentic colors. And the demand for this pure medium is not 
to be regarded as nullified by any transcendent factor in the incarnate Lord. 
As the divine thought came to expression from the lips of a prophet only 
through the medium of his psychical nature and activity, so in Christ, any 
content from the timeless sphere of divine thought and life may be supposed 
to have gained the forms of human conception and speech only by being 
mediated through His human soul. The purity of this finite medium must 
therefore be counted, as well on the catholic as on the humanitarian con- 
ception of His person, a prime condition of an authentic revelation of the 
divine. The holiness of the man Jesus must be reckoned a condition of the 
perfect manifestation of the Father in and through Him. John may not 
have directly enforced this point of view; but he provides for it in so far 
as he postulates the humanity of Jesus, since he profoundly emphasizes the 
intrinsic connection between spiritual enlightenment and holy character. 
No writer has ever surpassed him in the intense expression of the conviction 
that the seeing faculty is with love and righteousness, while darkness is the 
inevitable legacy of hatred and sin. 

Whatever consideration may have been given to the holy humanity of 
Jesus as a medium of divine revelation by the author of the Fourth Gospel 
and the related Epistles, that consideration by no means exhausted his con- 
templation of the qualifications of Jesus to make known the Father. He 
regarded his Lord as vastly transcending in nature and essential relations 
the common human scale, and estimated his competency to reveal the 
Father in the light of this transcendence. Im a variety of ways he affords 
unmistakeable intimation that this was his point of view. 

In the first place this Johannine standpoint is strongly asserted in the 
description of Christ as the Logos, or Word. As in Greek usage this term 
connotes both thought and its manifestation, so in the description which 
goes with it in the prologue to the Fourth Gospel we have this double refer- 
ence. On the one hand the Word, much after the pattern of Philo’s con- 
ception, is the archetypal idea, in which the world is potentially existent, 
the rational antecedent of all things, divine in relation and in nature. He 
was in the beginning, that is, as far back as thought can go in its effort to 
interpret the world. He was with God, that is, ia living union with Him. 
He was God, that is, the adequate image and counterpart of the eternal 
Father. On the other hand, the Word is the medium of manifestation. He 
bridges over the interval between the invisible Father and the visible system 


290 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


of things. ‘Without Him was not anything made that hath been made”. 
Within the world thus dependent on His agency, He has been, and is con- 
tinually a source of illumination. He is “the true light, even the light which 
lighteth every man coming into the world”. 

That in this lofty characterization of the Word, John was giving 
expression more or less directly to his conviction of the competency of the 
historical Jesus to reveal the Father cannot fairly be questioned. In his 
view, the Word became flesh. The Word was in the historical Jesus. And 
He was there as a transcendent factor in the historical personality, not as 
something eclipsed, quiescent, robbed of characteristic powers, and lost to 
self. Who can read the discourses which John attributes to the Master, 
even in the early part of his Gospel, and not discover there, in the order of 
self-consciousness ascribed to Jesus, a reflex of the transcendent rank and 
position of the Word who was with God in the beginning? His designation 
of Himself in the third chapter as the only begotten Son; His description 
of Himself in the fourth chapter as able to give the living water springing 
up into everlasting life; His expression of a sense of unlimited copartner- 
ship with the Father in the fifth chapter—all this, with much besides, is 
clearly indicative that Jesus, at least in the era of His public ministry, was 
credited in Johannine thought with a knowledge and sense of prerogative, 
correspondent with the exalted rank and relation of the Word. In the 
character of the Word He was accounted to have been with the Father in 
the beginning, to have come forth from Him, and, therefore, to have been 
pre-eminently qualified to reveal Him. 

The terms used in the prologue of the Gospel are most reasonably taken 
as amounting to an ascription of personality to the Word. The conclusion 
therefore follows that, in so far as the indwelling Word was viewed as con- 
stitutive of Christ, personal pre-existence was predicated of Him. It is to 
be noticed, too, that evidence of faith in Christ’s personal pre-existence is 
not confined to the prologue. John the Baptist is represented as saying of 
the Christ, ‘‘He was before me’’. Of Himself, Christ is said to have 
declared: ‘‘No man hath ascended into heaven but He that descended 
out of heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven’”’. “ He that cometh 
from above is above all * * * what He hath seen and heard, of that He 
beareth witness”. ‘The bread of God is He that cometh down out of 
heaven, and giveth life unto the world”. ‘‘ Not that any man hath seen the 
Father save He which is from God. He hath seen the Father”. ‘* What 
then if ye shall see the Son of Man ascending where He was before”. 
‘‘ Before Abraham was, I am”. ‘Glorify Me with Thine own self, with the 
glory which I had with Thee, before the world was” (1: 30; 3: 13, 31, 323 
6: 33, 45, 62; 8:58; 17:5). Now the collective force of these texts is 
decisive, and one and another of them taken separately may well work 
despair in the critic who is minded to impute a merely ideal pre-existence to 
the Johannine Christ. For instance, how on the supposition of nothing but 
ideal pre-existence can Christ be said to have dealt fairly with the Jews in 
making such an affirmation as is recorded in 8:58? His Jewish questioners 


JESUS THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER. 291 


understood a preceding statement to imply logically that He was contempo- 
rary with Abraham. Instead of correcting their inference, He approved it, 
or rather transcended it by explicitly affirming an antiquity superior to that 
of Abraham. Who can imagine that the evangelist designed to represent 
Him in this saying as merely throwing dust in the eyes of His opponents by 
using terms ina sense foreign to the occasion? Again, it is quite over- 
taxing to expel the thought of real pre-existence from the language of 17: s. 
It has been alleged, indeed, that, inasmuch as Christ asks for glorification 
as a reward for the faithful fulfilment of His mission, it could not have been 
His by right of original position. But this reasoning rests upon an arbitrary 
premise. Nothing in the context enforces the conclusion that Christ asks 
for glorification simply and solely as a reward for fidelity. In His perfect 
filial submission, He recognized that the times and the seasons were in the 
Father’s hand. It seemed to Him that His work was approaching a con- 
summation, so that soon the state of humiliation might properly give place 
to the state of exaltation. Very naturally, therefore, He gave expression to 
the aspiration by which His spirit was upborne. So far from standing in 
the way of His confident request, the perfection of His title to heavenly 
glory gave all the freer scope to His communion with the Father respecting 
His investment with that glory. Once more it has been urged, that the 
glory to which Christ looked may be compared to the treasure reserved in 
heaven for believers, or to the kingdom prepared for the faithful from the 
foundation of the world; and that consequently it is only a conceptual pre- 
existence with which we are here confronted. But this way of arguing 
overlooks the broad difference between the things brought into comparison. 
It is one thing to conceive of a treasure, a sphere of glory, a heavenly king- 
dom, as standing ready for foreordained subjects. It is another thing to say 
of a given subject that He possessed or enjoyed that glory or that kingdom 
before the world was. A statement of the latter order is never made in the 
New Testament respecting God’s redeemed children. Christ’s reference to 
a glory, which He had with the Father before the world was, stands apart 
from and in antithesis to any scriptural language ever applied to the simple 
human heir to a prepared estate. (Compare the author’s System of Christian 
Doctrine, pp. 613-615). 

The conviction was evidently sun-clear in the mind of the evangelist 
that the personal existence of Christ preceded His earthly life. No less 
certain is it that He thought of this exalted and prior existence as a source 
of authentic knowledge about things heavenly and divine. This point has 
already been brought out in the interpretation of the Johannine thought of 
the incarnation of the Word. A further enforcement might be drawn from 
the third chapter of the Gospel. For, here Christ is placed in contrast with 
every other messenger among men. Heis the one who alone has descended 
out of heaven, so that when He speaks of heavenly things He speaks of that 
which He has seen and heard. Because He had ever had His home in the 
bosom of the Father He was qualified to declare Him. 

A second transcendent qualification of Christ to reveal the Father, and 


4 


292 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


one closely related to the foregoing, appears in the Johannine thought of 
His unique sonship and co-partnership with the Father. The conviction 
that in Christ an extraordinary sonship came to manifestation may be 
observed in John’s choice of terms. He reserves the designation “Son of 
God” (Uios tou Theou) for Christ, styling all other participants in the 
filial relation simply children of God (¢ekna Theou). That this usage should 
prevail without a single exception may reasonably be regarded as indicative 
that sonship in some special and extraordinary sense pertained to Christ. 
The same belief is likewise attested by the employment of the phrase “ only 
begotten’’. Whatever interpretation may have been claimed for this phrase 
by one and another exegete, Meyer expresses its natural implication when 
he says: ‘‘ Only begotten designates the Logos as the on/y Son, besides 
whom the Father has none, who did not, like the fekna Theou (1: 12, 13), 
become such by moral generation, nor by adoption, but by intrinsic relation 
inhering in the divine essence, whereby He was zz the beginning with God, 
being Himself divine in nature and person”. (Comment on John 1*14.) 
In this point of view, the natal day of the Son was antecedent to the world. 
He was the Son as the ever-uttered Word. To borrow a phrase from the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, He was the Son as “ the effulgence of the Father’s 
glory and the express image of His substance”’. 

In harmony with this assumption of a transcendent sonship, we meet in 
the Johannine teaching with a mighty emphasis upon the complete co-part- 
nership of the Son with the Father. Few things in the whole content of the 
Fourth Gospel come to more frequent and energetic expression than this 
fact of full co-partnership. John the Baptist is represented as saying: 
‘‘The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into His hand” 
(3: 35). From the lips of Christ such sentences are placed on record as the 
following: ‘The Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all things that 
Himself doeth” (5:20). ‘‘The Father hath given all judgment unto the 
Son, that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father” (5 : 22, 23). 
‘““As the Father raiseth the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son 
quickeneth whom He will” (5:21). ‘As the Father hath life in Himself, 
_ even so gave He to the Son also to have life in Himself” (5: 26). ‘I am the 
bread of life”. ‘As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of 
the Father, so he that eateth Me, he also shall live because of Me” (6: 48, 57). 
‘‘He that sent Me is with Me; He hath not left Me alone” (8:29). ‘I 
speak the things which I have seen with My Father” (8:38). “I know 
Mine own, and Mine own know Me, even as the Father knoweth Me, and I 
know the Father” (10: 14, 15). “‘I and My Father are one” (10: 30). “If 
I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if Ido them, though 
ye believe not Me, believe the works; that ye may know and understand 
that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father” (10: 37, 38). “ Believest 
thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in Me? In that day ye 
shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in MeandI in you” (14: 10, 20). 
“‘ All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine” (16: 15). 

It may be admitted that in some of the Johannine sentences which 
accentuate the union of the Son with the Father the thought of moral union 


JESUS THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER. 293 


is prominent. Indeed, it would be a distinct loss to withhold recognition 
from this thought or to allow it to be displaced by any competing notion. 
The oneness of Christ with the Father in the sense of perfect conformity to 
the Father’s ethical nature and will is of the highest practical moment. It 
is revelation of the divine on this side that we want above all to receive in 
trustworthy and adequate form. But still it is quite without warrant to sup- 
pose that John made a gap between the moral and the metaphysical, and 
gave his contemplation exclusively to the former when he spoke of the one- 
ness of the Son with the Father. On the contrary, it is every way probable 
that he thought of the exceptional nature and divine relation which he 
affirmed of the Son as being auxiliary to the unique moral unity. We may 
say, indeed, that it is certain that he supposed the transcendent knowledge, 
which pertained to the Son from His residence with the Father before the 
foundation of the world, to have qualified Him in an extraordinary degree 
to embrace the moral purposes of God in all their reach and compass. The 
intrinsic connections of Johannine thought assure us that, though the pri- 
mary stress may have been on moral unity, there was a certain reference in 
the expressions under consideration to the truth asserted at the opening of 
the Gospel: ‘“‘ The Word was with God and the Word was God”’. 

It scarcely needs to be stated that no higher qualification for divine 
revelation can be conceived than this unique sonship and co-partnership 
with the Father. Who should know the Father so well as the only-begotten 
Son? The servant may not know what his lord doeth, but the son dwelling 
in bosom companionship with the head of the house may be supposed to 
share his counsels fully. Who should be able to represent the Father so 
well as the one having such community with Him that He could say of 
Himself: ‘‘I and My Father are one”’? Then, too, it must be remembered 
that perfect sonship is in itself, by virtue of its essential characteristics, a 
medium for revealing God in so far as the fatherly character is truly 
descriptive of Him. Sonship and fatherhood are normally correlated. The 
one reveals the other. When we see the child who has had full opportunity 
to know the parent, yielding to that parent hearty reverence, clinging love, 
and unqualified confidence, then spontaneously we image to ourselves the 
parent as characterized by tender dignity, exemplary largeness of heart, 
and great fervency and constancy of affection. Under the supposed condi- 
tions the filial mirrors the paternal. So we look upon the sonship of Jesus, 
and as we feel the charm of its beauty and perfection we pass up spon- 
taneously to the fatherhood to which it responds, and feel in like manner 
the charm of its beauty and perfection. The realized ideal of sonship 
touches us with a vital impression of the ideal fatherhood. In this way, 
from the beginning to the end of His career, Jesus shows us the Father. It 
is impossible for us to walk with Him and take note of His filial spirit with- 
out being introduced to the paternal counterpart. 

Once more Johannine teaching awards to Jesus a special prerogative to 
reveal the Father in consideration of His extraordinary vocation and works. 
His coming is set forth as the sun-burst of eternal love upon this world of 
sin and misery. Back of advent, doing, suffering, propitiation, everything, 


a 


294 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


was the free, unbought love of the Father. ‘God so loved the world that 
He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should 
not perish but have everlasting life’’ (3:16). ‘‘ Herein was the love of God 
manifested in us, that God hath sent His only-begotten Son into the world, 
that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, 
but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins”’ 
(1 John 4:9, 10). Thus the sacrifice of the Son was inaugurated in the 
sacrifice of the Father. Indeed, Bushnell kept fully within the warrant of 
Johannine teaching when He spoke of the cross as being in God’s heart 
from eternity. According to most emphatic declarations of the evangelist, 
the love of the Father was but given visible expression in all that the Son 
did and suffered for men. 

Not merely in its general tenor and import does the life-story of Jesus 
serve to reveal the Father, but also various single features of that story may 
be regarded as mirroring the feeling and attitude of the heavenly Father 
toward men. When we note the tenderness with which Jesus ministered to 
the suffering and distressed, we have an object lesson on the compassion of 
the heavenly Father, and are encouraged to believe, in spite of the hard 
appearance of nature and history, that His tender mercies are over all the 
works of His hands. When we observe the patience which Jesus exercised 
toward disciples who were short-sighted and slow of heart, we have disclosed 
to us the forbearance of the heavenly Father toward His blundering and 
imperfect children. When we read the parable of the good shepherd, and 
consider the wealth of affectionate solicitude and care for the sheep which 
it portrays, we know that all the Psalmist said about the Lord as a shepherd 
is gloriously true for every soul that has a purpose to follow His leading. 
When we come upon the record that Jesus having loved His own which 
were in the world loved them unto the end, or hear His own declaration 
that no one shall ever snatch His sheep out of His hand, we have pictured 
to us the tenacity of that love with which the heavenly Father cleaves to 
those who have ever entered into filial relations with Himself. In short, in 
all the typical scenes and events of the ministry of Jesus, we may note the 
application of His own comprehensive words: ‘He that hath seen Me 
hath seen the Father.” 

The aspiring mystic is inclined to think of the direct flight of the soul 
to God as his high privilege, and to rate any intermediate agency as a 
superfluity. At times he is even tempted to give slight recognition to his 
dependence upon the Christ. But in the continual use of this method he is 
likely to discover that his impression of the divine is becoming vague, and 
his sense of fellowship with the divine is waning in vitality. It answers to 
a deep need of the human heart to have the divine set forth through a con- 
crete historic medium. So the author of the Fourth Gospel felt, and he 
considered that the need had been perfectly met in his Lord and Master. 
The revelation of God in Jesus Christ flooded his soul as with the radiance 
of a sweet and holy morning. May the responsive heart be in us, that the 
same revelation may bring to us also a full measure of illumination and 
rejoicing. 


*‘THE PRESENCE OF THE FATHER, SON AND SPIRIT THROUGH 
OBEDIENCE TO THE COMMANDS OF CHRIST. 


(ST. JOHN 14:21-26.) 
BY REV. ROBERT A. ASH*WORTH, 


PASTOR OF THE First BApTisT CHURCH, MERIDEN, CONN. 


Luther used to call the Gospel of John ‘‘the child’s Gospel”, because 
of its simplicity. It is as simple as are all the great things of earth and 
heaven, and itis also as profound. It is as lucid and translucent as the 
ocean, and as fathomless. It is as bottomless as the Utgard horn, which 
Thor once tried to drain, for its sources are hidden in the depths of divine 
love. We shall never exhaust the meaning of this Gospel of heaven. It is 
a text-book for time and for eternity. 

In the three verses which we are to consider together, though they are 
not cast in the form of the syllogism, there is a logical progression of 
thought. The third verse is an epitome of the whole: ‘‘If a man love Me, 
he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and We will come 
unto him, and make Our abode with him”. Three key words serve to 
unlock its meaning: obedience, love, manifestation. First, obedience to 
Christ’s commands proves man’s love for Him; second, such obedience and 
love is rewarded by the love of the Father and the Son; third, this mutual 
love of God and man furnishes the conditions of the revelation of the 
Father and the Son in the loyal soul through the abiding presence of the Holy 
_ Spirit. 

1. First, then, obedience to Christ’s commands proves man’s love 
for Him. 

Obedience is at once the outgrowth and the test of love to Christ. ‘If 
a man love Me he will keep My words”’. Love to Christ must always, if it 
be worthy of the name, issue in obedience. It divines the wishes of the 
Master and springs to fulfil them. It needs no compulsion nor any code of 
rules: it serves the spirit, not the letter. 

Love for Christ, you see, is a very practical thing indeed. Itis nota 
mere emotion in which ‘‘to sit and sing ourselves away to realms of ever- 
lasting bliss”. It is not the luxurious and enervating atmosphere of which 
the sentimentalist and the poet prate, though it might well form the theme 
of the poet’s song. It ‘bids, not sit nor stand, but go!” It is obedience 
to the demands of a strenuous life of sacrifice. It places Christ above 
every worldly good, above father or mother; brother or sister. The life it 


* Delivered at the Sixth Conference, held at the Trinity Union Methodist Episcopal Church, 
March 9, 1904. 


295 


296 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


demands is no easy, rose-strown path, warmed by a mawkish sentimen- 
tality. It may lead a man to darkest Africa or China. It may mean the 
dengue fever, or a hostile Boxer mob and a cruel death ina lonely land. 
Love is not a notion of the brain, but a set of the will. It lives in deeds, 
not words; life service, not lip service. It says, “I’ll go where you want 
me to go, I’ll do what you want me to do, I’ll be what you want me to 
be”. It is the foundation of all morality, the inspiration of all self- 
sacrifice. 4 

And obedience is not only the logical consequence and fruit of love, it 
is also love’s supreme test. ‘‘He that hath My commandments and keep- 
eth them, he it is (and no other) that loveth Me”. Wecannot conceive a 
fairer test than this. There are many false and sentimental forms of affec- 
tion in the world, masquerading under that name, from which these words 
of Jesus strip the disguise. There is a moral and intellectual admiration of 
Jesus which is not love because it will not obey; it resides in the head, and 
never lays hold of the springs of action; it doffs the cap and bows the 
head, but does not do the will. Love is obedience. All other so-called 
love is spurious. To love is to obey; to obey is to love. 


“Obedience! ’Tis the great tap root, which still 
Knit round the rock of duty, is not stirred 
Though storm and tempest work their utmost will!” 


z. Such obedient love is rewarded by the love of the Father and the 
Son. This form of devotion, a love which serves, attracts as the earth the 
lightning, the love of God. Obedience is love’s law of gravitation. In a 
sense, God loves all men: ‘‘God so loved the world”, we read—the world 
alienated by wicked works, disloyal. In this one-half God’s heart, its giv- 
ing impulse, is satisfied. This is the love of benevolence, which loves while 
it cannot approve. But God’s is a moral affection, and He loves in a_ 
special sense those whose regard for Him is proved by obedience to the 
commands of His Son. ‘How can two walk together except they be 
agreed?” Love which is not mutual is incomplete. ‘‘ He that loveth Me 
Shall be loved of My Father”. God’s love for the Son includes all who are 
loyal to Him. This is the love of complacence, which also approves its 
object. It differs from that of benevolence, which God cherishes toward 
all men, as one’s pity for a guilty and unresponsive neighbor differs from 
the love of a father for a worthy son who returns his affection. In it the 
whole heart of God finds satisfaction, the craving as well as the giving 
impulse. 

He who obeys Christ, then, loves Him; he who loves Christ shall be 
loved of God. The third step in this progression is a very blessed one— 
“And 1”, says Jesus, “‘ will love him”. A new and more tender affection 
springs up in the heart of Jesus as He sees the eye of the Father resting 
upon His disciple. The loyal soul is now enfolded in love as in an atmos- 
phere; he is bathed init as ina sea. Three arcs make up the perfect 
circle: man’s arc of love is the shorter, yet it reaches a part of the way; 


PRESENCE OF THE FATHER, SON AND SPIRIT. 297 


Christ’s love and God’s love are the larger arcs which overlap each other 
and the love of man, and wrap him round and round in a perfect sphere. 

3. The two thoughts which we have traversed thus far are: 1. Obe- 
dience—of man to Christ. 2. Love—of the Father and the Son for the 
obedient soul. By these two steps on the ladder of love we have reached 
the third stage in the thought of the text—“ Manifestation”. ‘He that 
obeys Me loves Me, and he that lovingly obeys Me shall be loved by My 
Father and Myself, and I will manifest Myself to him”. 

Let us consider, first, the condition on which this manifestation of the 
Son is promised, and, second, the form which it takes. 

The condition of the revelation is love in the recipient soul. Jesus 
will not reveal Himself to all men. “Judas (not Iscariot) saith unto Him, 
Lord, what is come to pass that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and 
not unto the world?” Judas was not of that group of the disciples who 
understood most keenly the mind of their Master. Only lately Jesus had 
shown Himself openly to the people in His triumphal entrance into the holy 
city. Judas thought that something must have happened that Jesus should 
now confine His manifestation to a chosen few. Jesus does not answer 
Judas directly, but proceeds as though He had not heard the question. 
Yet He does in effect answer him by reaffirming the promise and emphasiz- 
ing again the condition on which the revelation of Himself may be received. 
“Jesus answered and said unto him. If a man love Me, he will keep My 
word; and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him”. Jesus 
will reveal Himself only to those who love and obey Him. He cam reveal 
Himself only to such, for without love in the heart no man can receive the 
revelation of God. 

The intellect alone can never know God. The brain is agnostic. The 
question of Job, ‘‘ Canst thou by searching find out God?” has never been 
answered with satisfaction to the intellect. The astronomer sweeps the 
heaven with his telescope and declares that he cannot find God there. 
The geologist with his hammer breaks up the rocks and delves into the 
earth, but does not discover the Creator. The anatomist with his scalpel 
divides the tissues of the body, and traces nerve, and vein and artery to its 
source, but the God in man eludes him. The psychologist ponders the 
processes of mind and formulates the rules of its action, but fails to find 
the guiding hand. 

But the intellect was never meant to be the only organ of discovery. 
Man was made to soar toward truth on the two pinions of intellect and 
heart. When he beats the air with either wing alone he flutters, but he 
cannot fly. A certain fondness for a matter will do much to aid us to 
pierce to the central secret of it. Without the lubricant of love the edge of 
mind grows dull. A little warm sunshine will sometimes bore farther than 
an augur, no matter how much brute force there may be behind it. All of 
which are but different ways of saying that the heart will often guide us to 
truth which the head would never discover. The artist detects beauties in 
nature, delicacies of color and form to which we are blind, because he is 


298 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


endowed with the insight of love. The musician hears harmonies to which 
we are deaf, because the whole man vibrates in unison with them. 


“ Earth’s crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God, 
But only he who sees takes off his shoes”. 


“Ever the words of the gods resound; 
But the porches of man’s ear 
Seldom in this low life’s round, 
Are unsealed that he may hear”. 


It is love that enlightens the eyes and unseals the ears. Love is the 
eye of the soul. They tell us, love is blind! No! there is nothing else in the 
universe so clear sighted ! 

We cannot know man until we have learned to love him. We do not 
know our acquaintances; only our friends, and these in proportion to our 
affection for them. In the better world, if men should be stripped of the 
bodies by which we have hitherto recognized them, we shall know only 
those with whose souls we have become intimate here. And we cannot 
know souls except as we love them. Without love is no sympathy, there- 
fore no knowledge. 

It is the loving heart alone, then, that can receive the manifestations 
of God in Christ. There must have been, I think, in the mind of John, 
some reminiscence of the thought of our text when he declared in his Epis- 
tle, ‘‘ Everyone that loveth, knoweth God”. We must come toward Him 
from this angle before we can understand Him. If the brain is agnostic, 
the heart is theistic. Christ cannot reveal Himself to a loveless world 
simply because it lacks the organ of apprehension. Affection is the only 
soil in which knowledge of God grows to its rarest heights. Paul, the 
philosopher, introduces us to God, tells us many things about Him; John, 
the beloved disciple, puts into our hand the key which unlocks the chamber 
in which He dwells and ushers us into His presence, and the name of that 
key is love. 

If we would, then, have this manifestation of Jesus in our lives, we 
must love Him and obey Him. Every act of loving obedience will make 
the vision clearer. This is the indispensible condition of knowledge of 
God, a love which reverently keeps His word. 

We pass to “he form which this promised manifestation will take: ‘‘ We 
will come unto Him and make Our abode with Him”’. 

Two points attract our attention. First, the manifestation of Christ is 
made from within the soul, not from without. This inwardness of the 
revelation is what troubled Judas. “What has come to pass”, he asks, 
“that Thou, as Messiah, will not show Thyself openly as we have expected, 
so that the Gentiles may come to Thy light, and kings to the brightness of 
Thy rising?” It is, however, a spiritual presence of which Jesus is speak- 
ing. It is no sudden or magical revelation, but one that comes by the slow 
process of living and loving. It is not accompanied by the signs of earthly 


PRESENCE OF THE FATHER, SON AND SPIRIT. 299 


power or by the trappings of earthly state. Men cannot say of it, “Lo, 
here!” or ‘“‘ Lo, there!”’ It is a revelation within the soul. 

Second, the manifestation is permanent, not transient: “‘ We will come 
unto Him and make Our abode with Him”. Jesus has been telling His 
disciples that He must soon leave them, but He now answers them that 
His absence is not to be for long. In exchange for the physical presence 
of the Master, with its limitations of place and time, they are to have the 
spiritual presence, which is free from these limitations. The loving heart 
is to become the dwelling-place of the Father and Son. 


We associate, and rightly, this passage with the promise, which came 
earlier in the chapter, of the gift of the Holy Spirit. In the verse immedi- 
ately preceding the text, Jesus has said, “In that day ye shall know that I 
am in My Father and ye in Me andI in you”. The expression “in that 
day” is held by most to indicate a precise moment rather than a period, 
and is referred to Pentecost. We are to recognize, then, in the coming of 
the Holy Spirit, the advent of the Father and Son to make their abode in 
the human heart. The thought most grateful to us is, that in the presence 
of the Spirit we may recognize the presence of Jesus. ‘‘The Lord is the 
Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:17). This Jesus whom we have learned to love comes in 
the Spirit to dwell with us. 


This blessed promise of the Saviour irradiates life with a new hope. 
Jesus is not merely a good man who has passed away, leaving only an influ- 
ence behind Him. Our God is not the unknowable God of the agnostic, 
of whom we can learn no more than of the further side of the moon. God 
and Christ dwell in the obedient soul. 


“ Nearer is He than breathing, 
Closer than hands or feet”. 


Having seen the vision, man is not to be left to fight the battle with sin 
alone. There is to be an abiding presence within the soul to inspire, and 
guard, and guide. 


In ancient Greece, so runs the legend, a prize was offered for the best 
statue of a certain god. Faith in the gods was almost gone, but in a coun- 
try village, near a marble quarry, lived a youth who still believed in them 
and loved them. He aspired to win the prize for himself. Choosing a 
rough block of marble, he set to work with all his skill. But, though he 
had in his soul the highest ideal of the majesty and beauty of the god 
whom he would portray, his clumsy fingers made little progress. At last 
the statues were gathered to be judged, and among them the rude, uncouth 
attempt of the boy. The critics ridiculed the inartistic figure, and the boy 
hung his head in shame. But the god in whom the youth believed had pity 
on him, and entered into the pathetic failure. Then the head was proudly 
raised, the harsh lines fell away into perfect symmetry and grace, and the 
statue took on the vigor and harmony of life. So Christ enters the soul 
that loves Him and redeems its failures, working out within it, in wondrous 


- sia | sib a 


300 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


beauty, the ideal of which it despairs. So the obedient soul triumphs 
through the indwelling Christ. 

The promise of Jesus fills life also with anew purpose. How well 
worth striving for is the fulfilment of the promise of the Saviour’s presence. 
How vain and empty in comparison the prospect which the world holds out 
to its votaries, of wealth, or fame, or ease. To gain Christ and be found in 
Him, to have His abiding presence in our hearts, is the noblest aspiration 
of the soul that loves Him. 

It makes forever impossible also any lower aim. If Christ will dwell 
in us, the house must be swept and garnished, and other guests, whom He 
cannot know, must be expelled. How can selfishness, or greed, or any 
baseness find a home with us? We can never be satisfied now with anything 
less than the highest. 

A Roman sculptor once began a statue of the Christ. After weary 
months of toil he brought a friend into his studio and unveiled the statue 
with the question, ‘‘ Who is this?”’ The friend replied, ‘‘ That is surely the 
figure of some very great and good man”. Profoundly disappointed, the 
artist set to work again, and after other months of labor, bringing into the 
room a little child, he again asked the question. The child clasped her 
hands and said, ‘‘ Suffer the little children to come unto me”. Then the 
sculptor knew that he had succeeded. A little later came an order from the 
emperor that he should make a statue of Venus for the palace. But the 
sculptor proudly refused, sending back the message, ‘‘I have conceived a 
statue of the Christ! I can no longer carve statues to Venus!’ So the 
vision once seen, the presence once felt, we can no longer live upon the 
lower plane of the past. We are driven forward to ever new heights of 
achievement and experience. - 

It raises man, finally, to a new dignity. To be capable of such fellow- 
ship with God as Jesus here suggests, predicates something of man that is 
very wonderful indeed. What less does it mean than the essential unity of the 
nature of God and Christ and man? It draws man out of time and sets him 
in eternity. It finds him on the earth and leaves him in heaven. It is the 
last and greatest word that can be said of man, and sets him off from the 
rest of created things in exalted isolation. It arouses every ambition of the 
soul, sanctifies it and satisfies it. This is our heritage from God, heirs, not 
only of what God has to give, but heirs of God Himself. ‘‘What is man 
that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him?” 
The grateful soul exclaims, ‘‘Thou hast made him but little lower than God, 
and hast crowned him with glory and honor!” ‘Thanks be unto God for 
His unspeakable gift!” 

“The very God! think Abib; dost thou think? 
So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too— 
So, through the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying, ‘ O heart I made,,.a heart beats here! 
Face, My hands fashioned, see it in Myself! 
Thou hast no power, nor mayst conceive of Mine, 


But love I gave thee, with Myself to love, 
And thou must love Me who have died for thee!” 


* FRIENDSHIP WITH JESUS THROUGH OBEDIENCE TO HIS COMMANDS. 
(St. JOHN 15:14, 15.) 
BY REV. JOHN D. PICKLES, PH. M., 


PASTOR OF ST. JOHN’s METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, BosTON, Mass. 


I have been assigned the exposition of John 15:14, ‘‘ Ye are My 
friends if ye do the things which I command you”’. 

The topic as formulated is ‘‘ Friendship with Jesus through Obedience 
to His Commands”. 

I regret that I have not had the privilege and the benefit of all the 
Conferences dealing with the Gospel of John, which Dr. Sears so aptly 
termed the “ Heart of Christ”. And especially would I have enjoyed Drs. 
Sheldon and Mackay, as in your last Conference they treated specifically of 
matters closely and even vitally related to the topic assigned me. 

All the utterances of Jesus are of importance, but especially are those 
accentuated which fell from His lips as He moved tenderly yet resolutely 
forward into the deepening shadows of Gethsemane and Calvary. They 
were the farewell words, the dying legacy, of One who in a few short hours 
would breathe out His life amid the awful agonies and bitter humiliations of 
the Cross. We would come then into this chamber of the dying with bated 
breath and utmost reverence, and listen with deepest attentiveness to the 
words which hold in themselves an immortality of significance. Among 
them are the words immediately before us, ‘‘ Ye are My friends if ye do 
whatsoever I command you”. 

Four things emerge out of my study of this statement. 

1st. The Absolutism of Jesus, involving His possession of Deity. 

No mere man would dare assert himself in this form. For any com- 
pelled obedience, as between man and man, leads not to friendship, but to 
serfdom and to slavery. It is but the prelude to shackles and to stripes 
and to hatred. But as we throw our thought over the larger area of Christ’s 
teaching throughout His whole ministry, we find this indirect yet vital 
assumption fully and positively maintained in the discourses of our Lord. 
In His masterly “‘Sermon on the Mount”, which title Prof. Gibson dis- 
claims as being altogether too inadequate and for which he would substitute 
Matthew’s own term, ‘“‘ The Gospel of the Kingdom”, as ‘“‘the grand char- 
ter of the commonwealth of heaven’’, Jesus directly makes the issue as 
pertaining to authority between Himself and others, when He says again 
and again, “‘ Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, * * * 
but 7 say unto you” (Matt. 5:21, 22, 27, 28, 33, 34, etc.). In the tenth 
chapter of this Gospel, He declares, ‘‘All that ever came before Me are thieves 


* Delivered at the Eighth Conference, held at All Saints Memorial Church, May 11, 1904. 


301 


302 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


and robbers; /am the door” (John 10: 8,9). One day, when great multitudes 
were following Him, He startled them and has challenged every generation 
since, by the sweeping words, “‘If any man come to Me, and hate not his 
father, and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, 
and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26). These 
are but samples of many direct and of more indirect, but none the less 
forceful claims which Jesus makes upon men for their recognition of the 
‘supreme place which He must hold in their affections and service growing 
out of the divine nature which inheres in Him, and to which His life, His 
teachings and His achievements give witness. 

To an ordinary human being possessing only the attributes and powers 
of our common humanity, yet making such a tremendous claim as this upon 
his fellow mortals, the answer would be disdain and contempt, and if per- 
sisted in, would mean either an asylum for the insane or the walls of a 
prison. But when made by this one unique world-shadowing character, 
whose influence augments with the centuries, who is being recognized by 
increasing millions as ‘‘ very God of very God’”’, as the “‘ eternal Son of the 
Father ”’, as ‘‘God over all, blessed forevermore’’, then this claim, abso- 
lute as it is, and all inclusive as it is, in its nature and in its duration, is 
recognized as being indeed most reasonable, and appeals in the strongest 
manner to the thoughts and affections of men. Only as Christ possesses 
all that is involved in Thomas’ confession, ‘‘My Lord and My God”’, has 
he any right to say or any power to enforce, ‘‘ Ye are My friends, if ye do 
whatsoever I command you”’. 

Another look at my topic, ‘‘ Friendship with Christ through Obedience 
to His Commands” seems to suggest — 

2nd. A reversion of the natural order. 

Obedience is a product, not a cause. If we have read our New Testa- 
ment aright we have held that Love is the mother of obedience and at once 
a kindred passion to that we are interpreting springs to the surface. “If 
ye love Me, ye wz// keep my commandments” (John 14:15, R. V.), and 
another of similar import, ‘‘ Ifa man love Me, he will keep my words ” (14 : 23) ; 
and Paul in his famous and unequalled panegyric of Love in the thirteenth 
chapter of 1 Corinthians, makes it the inner and potential seed out of which 
everything springs and apart from which everything is valueless and fruit- 
less. And yet obedience as productive of love finds weighty indorsement 
not only from the passage before us, but from others. Do we not find in 
the discussions and differences between Paul and James as regards faith 
and works, a kindred distinction to this between love and obedience? 
James insists that works are productive of and necessary to the salvation of 
men, while Paul insists that faith, and faith alone, is the basis of man’s ac- 
ceptance with God. Jesus says in the fourteenth chapter and twenty-first 
verse of this Gospel, ‘“‘ He that hath My commands and keepeth them; he it 
is that leveth Me”; 4e and no one else, for that is the real significance of it. 
The man who has taken the commandments of Jesus into his heart, made 
them a part of his very nature, woven them into the very texture of his 


FRIENDSHIP WITH JESUS THROUGH OBEDIENCE. 303 


moral and spiritual being ; #4z7s man to whom the commandments of Jesus 
are a delight, a joy, yea, have become the very passion of his soul, ‘“‘he it 
is’’, and he only, says Jesus ‘“ /oves me’’. May we not say then that love 
dictates obedience, but obedience issues in a higher love? There was a 
time in the relations of Jesus and His Apostles when He considered them 
as “‘servants”’. But in the progress of their intercourse as they grew to 
know Him more clearly and to discern His nature and His mission, and 
He to know them more closely and mark the steady growth of their recep- 
tivity and the taking on of likeness to Himself, He recognizes their fitness 
for still closer relations, and says, ‘“‘ Henceforth, I call you not servants, 
but friends”. Their obedience had led up to a higher friendship. 

The truest view, rather should I say, the true view, looks upon these 
relationships, not as separate or as antagonistic, but as merging into a 
higher unity and characterized by — 

3rd. Co-ordinate and alternating interaction. 

Love incites obedience; obedience intensifies love, and so on through 
the varying experiences of life, deepening confidences, developing friend- 
ship, producing and enhancing likenesses, changing from glory to glory by 
the Spirit of God. And thus the onward, upward, outward processes of the 
spiritual life move, bearing the soul steadily and blessedly into the deeper 
intimacies and mysteries of a friendship which has eternity for its field of 
action and God for its eternal object. One has likened this growth to a 
benefactor who has rescued a maiden from poverty and misfortune, has 
placed her in favorable conditions, has given her educational advantages, 
has watched her remarkable development in intellectual acquirements, in 
graces of manner, in qualities of character, in all womanliness of nature, 
until philanthropy has changed into sympathy, and sympathy into friend- 
ship, and friendship into affection, and affection has laid himself and all 
that he possesses at the feet of his erstwhile ward and in wedded love the 
highest happiness of life has found expression. And so the soul, redeemed 
by the philanthropic love of Christ, won to service by its own great needs 
and the knowledge of the divine compassion, responds in obedience and 
enlarges in affection and becomes increasingly worthy of confidence until 
all the wealth of Deity —is poured out upon it, the human becomes divine 
and God ig all in all. 

A strong if not conclusive suggestion of this interaction and mutual 
dependence is seen when you place in close contact the cognate passages, 
“Tf ye love Me, ye will keep My commands,” and, “If ye keep My com- 
mandments, ye shall abide in My love’. Love leads to obedience and 
obedience makes love permanent, and incidentally here is a sovereign rem- 
edy for, or preventive of, the lamentable experiences of backsliding. In 
the equilibrium of both hemispheres, the one of love and the other of obe- 
dience, is found the rounded, the completed, the symmetrical, the balanced, 
the resplendent globe of finished Christian character. In these inter- 
actions may be traced the shining stairways ascending to God; the grades 
of growth in the spiritual processes; the rungs in the ladder from the stony 
pastures of Bethel to the ladder’s summit, on which stands God. 


304 THE GOSPEL OF ST.JOHN. 


One other element, and that the most important remains to be con- 
sidered, and that is — 

4th. The fersonal element. 

This is not a service of things, nor of ‘institutions however venerable, 
nor of truths however definite and definitive. It is not obedience to creeds, 
however logical, nor to churches, nor to Bibles, nor to dogmas, which is 
first demanded of man. His first service, his primary summons, is to a per- 
son: ‘Come unto Me”’; ‘‘As many as received im, to them gave He power 
to become the Sons of God”’. The apprehension and appreciation of Christ, 
philosophically and theologically, both as to His nature and His work, 
may, and do differentiate themselves in a thousand and one forms, but the 
essential, vital thing is to get to the person personally, to come into contact 
with the living, breathing, triumphant, eternal Christ. 


This was the power of apostolic preaching. Would you have the secret. 


of Paul’s impassioned and imperial ministry? He takes no pains to conceal 
it, but blazens it abroad in utterances that have stirred the centuries, in 
words that carry in themselves a deathless significance. “I know Him 
whom I have believed, and [ am persuaded that He is able to guard that 
which I have committed unto Him against that day”’ (2 Tim. 1: 12, R. V.). 

The dying Alexander, Professor at Princeton, recognized the majestic 
meaning of that saying, when, having asked a friend to read to him the living 
word, the friend read this passage: ‘I know zz whom I have believed”. 
Professor Alexander put his trembling hand upon the arm of the reader and 
whispered, ‘Stop, I will not have even a preposition between me and my 
Lord”. But still closer even than this, and even more significant of the 
source of Paul’s magnificent ministry, is that other utterance, “I live; and 
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, 
I live by the faith of the Son of God” (Gal. 2: 20). This personal love of 
Jesus Christ gave the initial impulse, the tidal force to the message of the 
Gospel as it has come rolling down through the centuries. It is the vin- 
dication of its presence and its power today. 

Dr. Van Dyke sets this forth strongly when, speaking of the power of 
this Gospel of a Person, he says, ‘‘St. Chrysostom, St. Francis of Assisi 
and Savonarola had it; John Wesley and George Whitefield had it. In 
different ages and under different conditions, these men had the primal 
message which moves men to believe. And in our own age, under our own 
conditions, a like message has been proclaimed with power. Pere Lacor- 
daire preached such a message in Notre Dame, and Canon Liddon in St. 
Paul’s to listening thousands. Bishop Brooks made it thrill like a celestial 
music through the young manhood of America, and Dwight L. Moody has 
spoken it with vigorous directness in every great city that knows the English 
tongue. One thing only is the same in all of them and that is, the source of 
their power. Their central message, the core of their preaching, is the 
piercing, moving, personal Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God and 
Saviour of mankind. Zvy7s, in its simplest form; //zs in its clearest expres- 

sion; ¢#is presentation of a person to persons in order that they may first 


FRIENDSHIP WITH JESUS THROUGH OBEDIENCE. 305 


know, and thus love and trust and follow Him—//zs is pre-eminently the 
Gospel for an age of doubt”’. 

In this summing up of the contents of his great book, Dr. Van 
Dyke only expresses the simple truth. In this fact of personal contact with 
the personal Christ lies the hope of the race. Every individual, rich or 
poor, learned or unlearned, master or slave, Saxon or Slav, male or female, 
Jew or Gentile, can come directly, personally to Jesus Christ and He meets 
him on his own level. Is he the hardened, cruel, pitiless jailer at Philippi? 
Jesus meets him in the midnight hour and before morning gives him the 
new name and the white stone. Is he the cultured, religious, phylactery- 
wearing Pharisee, who under cover of darkness seeks the Master? Jesus 
meets him with the statement that ‘“‘as Moses lifted up the serpent in the 
wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth 
in Him should not perish but have eternal life’’, and in the Sanhedrin, this 
man, in the very face of the Lord’s enemies befriended Him, and when His 
sacred body was laid in the solemn tomb, it was Nicodemus who brought a 
hundred pound weight of myrrh and aloes that he might attest his loving 
friendship for his Lord. Is it the blind man at the gate of Jericho that cries 
out in- his wretchedness, ‘‘Thou Son of David, have mercy upon me!” ? 
The Master speaks, and lo, the blind man sees, and there bursts upon his 
astonished gaze the beauties of the earth, the sea and the glorious heaven, 
and better than these, the faces of friends, of children and of wife, and best 
of all, the radiant face of Jesus, the Christ, the Healer and Saviour of men. 
Is it contemplative Nathaniel sitting under the fig tree? He responds at 
once to the evidences inhering in the Master, and cries out, ‘“‘ Rabbi, Thou 
art the Son of God, Thou art the King of Israel!’”’ And so it has been 
through the centuries. Whatever divergencies of thought and divisions 
ecclesiastical, the irenic ground on which all could stand in sympathies and 
in mutual appreciation, has been that of personal knowledge of Jesus Christ, 
the personal contact in profoundest experiences and spiritual illuminations 
with the Lord Christ. Out of the depths of these personal experiences 
and these divine friendships, men have spoken with power to their fellow- 
men, for they have spoken of that which they have seen and heard, of Him 
with whom they have had sweetest communion, and through whose power 
manifested in them, they have stormed intrenchments and pulled down 
strongholds, driven back the armies of the aliens, marched triumphantly 
across life’s battlefield, and at length have furled their victorious banners 
by the great white throne. It is because of “having not seen, they love, 
and in whom, though seeing Him not, they believe”, that He takes them 
into this divinest friendship, this holiest intimacy, and makes known to 
them the resources of His Kingdom, the infinite wealth of His own nature, 
and still says to them, ‘“‘ Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have 
entered the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them 
that love Him”. 

‘Such friendship transforms obedience into passionate service and 
makes life all luminous with the presence and power of God. 





*“THAT THEY ALL MAY BE ONE.” 


(St. JoHN 17.) 
BY HENRY T. FOWLER, PH. D., 


PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE AND HISTORY IN BROWN UNIVERSITY, 


PROVIDENCE, R. I. 


In that unique composition, the interpretation of which occupies these 
Conferences, there are dominant notes and chords—the grace and truth 
that came, light and darkness, life and death, the Father, Saviour, Com- 
forter—and these have been struck by skilled hands during the past 
months. Today I would touch on a minor theme in the Gospel. 

As I understand the purpose of those who have instituted these gather- 
ings, it is, in part, to secure interdenominational sympathy by common study 
and meditation upon a portion of Scripture which gives the deepest insight 
into the heart-life of Christ and the Father. In part, the purpose is to 
bring together professional students of the Bible, with preachers and peo- 
ple, for that communion which must develop when men speak often together 
of the Lord whom they love, even as he is revealed in this wonderful Fourth 
Gospel. If I am right in my apprehension of the purpose in this Con- 
ference, is not the thought which is so prominent in the seventeenth 
chapter of John, the thought of unity, a peculiarly appropriate one for our 
consideration ? 

The conception of unity between Christ and the Father is a prominent 
element throughout the Gospel of John from the opening section, where 
the Word is declared to have been with God from the beginning, on 
through such assertions as ‘‘I and the Father are one”’ (10:30), ‘“‘I have 
kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (15:10), and 
through such appeals as, “If you do not believe me believe the works, that 
you may know that I am in the Father and the Father in me, or else 
through the very works believe” (14:10, 11). Through these, on to the 
last discourse and prayer before the betrayal, we may trace this theme, 
coming out again and again. 

The unity between Christ and the disciple, too, appears somewhat, 
even outside of the seventeenth chapter,—‘ He that abideth in me and I in 
him, this one beareth much fruit, because apart from me ye are not able to 
do anything”. Another phase of unity, that of man with man, is also pre- 
sented here and there in John’s Gospel. It appears in the picture of one 
fold, one shepherd (10: 16), or ‘‘ the gathering together into one the children 


* Delivered at the Sixth Conference, held at the Trinity Union Methodist Episcopal Church, March 
9» 1904. 


306 


THAT THEY ALL MAY BE ONE. 307 


of God that are scattered abroad” (11:52). The dond of triple unity is 
likewise emphasized, “‘ If ye keep my commandments ye shall abide in my 
love, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his 
love”’ (15:10). We find, then, in the Gospel of John, the unity of Christ 
and the Father, the unity of Christ and the disciples, the unity of the dis- 
ciples with each other, and the bond of this threefold unity. 

Paul, as well, emphasizes the necessity of unity among the followers of 
Christ. He beseeches them to walk worthily of their vocation, endeavor- 
ing to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, urges upon them 
their one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father 
above all, through all, and in them all (Eph. 4:3 ff). For the Romans he 
prays that they may be of the same mind one with another, according to 
Christ Jesus. The writer of Acts emphasizes the fact that the multitude of 
them that believed were of one heart and one soul. The thought of the 
unity of Christians and its bond in the common hope and common Lord, 
is, indeed, confined to no one chapter and to no one writer in the New 
Testament, but this comes nowhere else to such beautiful and complete 
expression, I think, as in the chapter which we are to consider this 
afternoon. 

The constantly widening circles of inclusiveness in the divine prayer, 
recorded in John 17, give opportunity to develop the complex relations of 
the theme with all possible clearness. In the opening verses, when Jesus 
prays for himself, his essential and eternal oneness with the Father is 
assumed,—‘‘\ have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And 
now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which 
I had with thee before the world was’. The circumference of the peti- 
tion soon widens to include those to whom Christ had manifested his 
Father’s name, to whom he has given the words which were given him, 
who have known that he came out from the Father and have believed that 
God sent him. As he contemplates his departure from the world, view- 
ing it as though it were already accomplished, he prays, “And now I am 
no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. 
Holy Father keep them in thy name, which thou has given me, that they 
may be one as we are one”. The next verse makes even more definite the 
ground of his anxiety for them, ‘“‘ While I was with them in the world I 
kept them in thy name’”’. 

With the widening of the prayer to include his followers, as well as 
himself, the unity of Jesus with God, which has been his strength and 
power through all the years, becomes the norm of the union which must ~ 
exist among the disciples now that their leader is to depart and leave them 
in the world,—‘‘ Keep them in thy name that they may be one as we are”’. 
Marcus Dods explains this phrase, ‘“‘ Keep them in thy name, that they 
may be one”’, as meaning that the retention of the knowledge of the 
Father which Christ had imparted to them would make them one. The 
name seems to be the knowledge of the Father which had been given to 
Christ for revelation to the disciples, and this knowledge it is that will make 
them one, as Christ and God are one. 





308 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


In commenting upon the inaugural vision of Isaiah, George Adam 
Smith exclaims: ‘The vision of God—this is the one thing needful for 
worship and for conduct”. That seems to be nearly the thought of the 
eleventh and twelfth verses here, if we adopt the older text, on which the 
Revisers’ translation is based, not ‘‘ Keep through thine own name those 
whom thou hast given me’’, but “ Keep them in thy name, which (name) 
thou hast given me’. ‘ While I was with them I kept them in thy name, 
which (name) thou hast given me, and I guarded them”. The name, we 
know, signified quite generally in Biblical writings the attribute, the function, 
or character. If the Christian church could but have kept with singleness 
of vision in the zame of God, that is in the knowledge of his character and 
work as the one thing needful, its history would have been far other than 
one of so much discord; then we might have been one, even as God and 
Christ. I hope we are learning in these latter days that we may differ 
about the nature and manner of inspiration ; that we may differ about forms 
of government and forms of worship, even about forms of ordinances or 
the exact method of salvation, and yet may be one in his name; one in 
the effort to know God; one in our faith that whatever else may be revealed 
to us or not revealed, we have a revelation of God in his name, in his 
essential character. 

Again the circle of Christ’s loving prayer widens, ‘‘ Neither for these 
only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word, 
that they may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, 
that they also may be inus’”’. As Meyer says, ‘“‘ This ethical unity, to be 
specifically Christian, must correspond to its original type, ‘Aven as thou 
Father, art in me and I in thee’”. We have noted already how, in the 
Fourth Gospel, abiding in the Father’s love is the state of that unity 
(15:10, 11), doing the Father’s works is the expression, nay, it would seem, 
the proof of that unity (10:38). The prayer is that all who believe through 
the word of the disciples may live and move in the Father and Christ as 
they in each other. 

Thus the thought advances, enlarging in the inclusiveness of its hope 
for Christian fellowship, and then it rises to a higher plane, in the thought 
of the possible grace that can effect such inconceivable union,—‘And the 
glory which thou hast given me, I have given unto them, that they may 
be one even as we are one”. 

What is this glory given by Christ to make believers one, even as God 
_ and he are one? Perhaps we cannot answer with certainty. Many have 
been the suggestions from the days of the fathers onward. Their very 
number indicates the wide variety of aspects that the Christian’s glory dis- 
plays—the glory of the apostolic office (Chrysostom), the glory of the 
Christian life, of the life of Christ in believers, of sonship, of love, of grace 
and truth, or the glory on which the believers are to enter at the coming of 
Christ. It has even been ventured to interpret glory here as the same as 
that in v. 5, ‘‘O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the 
glory which I had with thee before the world was’’, or in v. 24, “I would 


THAT THEY ALL MAY BE ONE. 309 


that where I am they also may be with me; that they may behold my glory 
which thou hast given me’’. If this be the true interpretation, then the 
words in v. 22 carry us far indeed, to the glory which cannot be com- 
pletely and actually bestowed until we are where he is,—‘‘And the glory 
which thou hast given unto me I have given unto them, that they may be 
one even as we are one; I in them and thou in me, that they may be ger- 
fected into one”. We may well join in the exclamation, ‘“‘ What a strong 
bond of unity must lie in the sure warrant of fellowship in eternal glory!” 

We have traced imperfectly this increasing thought through the widen- 
ing circles of the chapter. To recapitulate briefly: Christ’s unity with God 
is assumed as he prays, thinking first of his immediate departure to the 
glory which he had with God before the world was. Next he passes to 
those who are left in the world unguarded, and his unity with the Father 
becomes the standard of their unity with one another, in which they are to 
be preserved in the name of God revealed by Christ. The thought next 
includes all who are to come after, and the same standard of union with 
one another is anticipated for this vast company. Then the hope expands 
to include not only union of man with man, like the union of Christ with 
God, but the growing, deepening vision adds to the prayer that they all 
may be one, the fuller hope that in this unity they may bein God and 
Christ as the Father is in Christ and Christ inthe Father. At last the 
divine prayer takes wings. With the thought of the glory that had been 
given to him, and which he had already, in his loving purpose, poured out 
upon men, comes the final stage of the vision we are following,—“ I in them 
and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one”. 

We may observe that in this latter part, another thought of John’s Gos- 
pel appears inwoven with that which we have considered: ‘‘ That they all 
may be one, in order that the world may believe that thou didst send 
me’’. In earlier chapters we have seen Christ appealing for belief in him- 
self because of what he is; but if his personality fails to win conviction, 
demanding belief because of the works he does, the works of the Father 
(10:38; 14:10, 11). Now his audible voice and visible hand are no more 
to work the works of God among men. He isno more to move among 
mén in physical presence, winning them as his divine character expresses 
itself in his human personality. After coming out from the upper room, 
he had given his disciples a badge by which they might be known as his 
followers. (Read John 13:33-35.) Now inthe prayer we advance to the 
thought that this unity, which he anticipated for all believers, shall be the 
legible record to the world, not only that they are disciples, but that he, 
their Master, was sent from God. Even after the final expression, that they 
may be perfected into one, the vesz/f, that the world may know “that thou 
didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me”’, is again enforced. 

I have drawn out to view only one or two threads of the wonderful 
weaving of this seventeenth chapter of John, which has been styled ‘“‘ The 
simplest in language, the profoundest in meaning in the whole Bible”. 
That which might be called the central thought of this chapter has hardly 


310 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


been alluded to, but the few verses considered may open to the attentive 
eye prophetic visions of possibilities for humanity which stagger the imagina- 
tion. We can see how such truths overwhelmed the great soul of Paul 
when he wrote in the Epistle to the Ephesians of the unsearchable riches of 
Christ; in that third chapter the mystery of it all finds such wonder- 
ful expression: the riches of his glory, the possibility of Christ’s dwelling 
in their hearts, the length and breadth and depth and height, the love of 
Christ passing knowledge, the fulness of God who is able to do above all 
that we can ask or think. Paul’s great soul was flooded when the possi- 
bility of Christ’s dwelling in men’s hearts swept over him. 

Such, Christian friends, is the possibility for humanity pictured in this 
seventeenth chapter of John. We have all contemplated it before, our 
eyes have grown accustomed to the light, perhaps, so that it no longer daz- 
zles, and yet, if we stop and look once and again, we may see here the very 
face of God shining out between dark clouds of human sin and weakness. 
On the one side stands the record of the betrayer gone out into the night; 
on the other, the trial and death. And so down through the history, even 
to our own day, this light from God shines out, showing to man the possi- 
bility of a life at one with God and man, the possibility of a witness for 
Christ that cavil can not gainsay; and all through the history follow the 
black clouds on either side, the clouds of betrayal, denial and crucifixion, 
for we have not been one as God and Christ are one, we are not yet per- 
fected into one, that the world may know that God sent Christ to make 
men at one with their fellow men and at one with their God. 

If we view the ideal held before us in this vision of Christ and then 
view conditions as they are or have been, it may seem that the prayer of 
Christ can never be answered; but the signs are surely about us that we 
are at last beginning to turn toward a developing into unity. May we not 
read in the history of the church that is now making about us the promise 
that all who believe through the spread of the apostolic word will at last be 
perfected into one? 

I am not discussing the detailed question of the advantages of unity or 
of multiplicity in church organization and creed. I have faith that when 
at last we cease to fight against God’s keeping us simply in his name, 
those questions will be decided in accordance with the need of that future 
age, and just what that need may be human wisdom today can hardly 
venture to affirm. Rather I would desire that the words of this prayer, in 
their depth and simplicity, might ring on and ring ever in our hearts, that 
no one of us may have any part in delaying the answer to the prayer. God 
help each one of us so to live in our place that we may speed the day when 
all shall be one, even as God and Christ are one. 


*THE UNITY OF CHRISTIANITY AS REVEALED IN THE PRAYER 
OF CHRIST. 


(St. JOHN 17.) 
BY REV. HENRY S. NASH, D. D., 


PROFESSOR OF NEw TESTAMENT, INTERPRETATION IN THE EPISCOPAL THEOLOGICAL 


SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASs. 


I shrink from trying to lead your study of this great chapter. There 
comes into my mind a saying of the great German pietist, Spener, that he 
never presumed to preach from a text taken from this chapter. But I 
guard myself against the strength of this quotation by venturing to think 
that he did not have the right idea about the house of God. His con- 
ception of the mysteries of God reminds me of certain houses wherein 
children are not expected to play for fear they will break the furniture. I 
do not believe that the house of the Lord God has been built upon that 
plan. I do believe that the Lord is willing to take the risk of a certain 
amount of broken furniture in his house, to the end that his children may 
learn to play, if they fully remember that they are playing, and do not pre- 
sume to put on the airs of popes:in his house. 

Before one enters the chapter there are certain features of the Fourth 
Gospel of which I trust you will permit me to remind you. The first one 
is that, according to John, the Gospel is the mind of Christ. This book 
among all the books that have ever been penned by man is the most 
singular in its monotony, if one chooses to use that word. Nothing 
happens,—one may venture to say,—in the Fourth Gospel; nothing 
happens, but everything is. The whole Gospel is the mind of Jesus. 
From that point of view it is exceedingly becoming and beautiful that the 
culmination of the self-revelation of Jesus should be a prayer. For prayer, 
when we come rightly to understand it is the deepest of all our thinking. 
That, of course, is not true regarding the bulk of our prayers. I fancy that 
regarding the large part of our prayers the child’s opinion about praying is 
largely true. You know what the child is apt to think about prayers. He 
believes that praying is an easy way to get things. The average child 
thinks that prayer is a substitute for hard work. And Iam not sure but 
that one carries that conception of prayer a good way on his pilgrimage 
through time and space. But prayer rightly understood is the deepest of 
our thinking, it is the severest of all our labors. The very last petition of 
our life is “Lord, teach me to pray”. ‘‘ Teach me to pray, I care not 
what else Thou givest or takest away, teach me to pray’’, we say to the 
Master. 


* Delivered at the Seventh Conference, held at the Central Congregational Church, April 13, 1904, 


311 


312 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


So it follows, if we understand prayer aright, that it is natural that in 
this wonderful book, the final self-revelation of the Master should be a 
prayer. What happens to us when we truly pray? Why this is what 
happens, the divine and the human come together. It is in prayer, if it be 
vital, and in prayer alone, that we know what revelation is. We do a little 
talking, but very little do we feel about vital praying, about vital revela- 
tion. But so far as we feel revelation with our hearts as well as theorize 
about it with our heads, it is in those rarer moments of real praying 
that we feel it, because it is in prayer that the mind of God presses irre- 
sistibly upon our minds; and it is in prayer that the word of God makes 
of our thought its medium, and through our lives publishes itself in terms 
of our experience. And therefore it is with noble propriety that in this 
book the last word of the self-revelation of the Master should be a prayer. 

As we enter the chapter, this one thing should be carefully remem- 
bered regarding it, namely: that the Master’s mood is not one of sorrow, 
but rather one of triumphant peace and joy. A good many of the standard 
commentaries on this book have gone astray at this point, in that they have 
found here and there a suggestion of melancholy in the Master’s mood. 
But the key to this chapter is the last verse of the sixteenth chapter, and 
the key-word there is the word ‘‘peace’’. It is therefore in the mood of 
triumphant self-possession and exulting certitude that we enter chapter 17. 

In the first verse Jesus says to His Father, “The hour is come, 
glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may glorify Thee’. Now we must be careful 
to get that word glory by the right handle. What does it mean? To 
glorify God means,— does it not?—to make Him intelligible. To glorify a 
great picture is to make it intelligible, to interpret it. To glorify a great 
man by some splendid biography is to make the man’s mind and purpose 
plain to his fellows. So, there is but one way to glorify God, and that is to 
make His mind plain to His servants and children. To glorify God is to 
make His being and will intelligible to His children. Naturally, then, this 
is the way that Jesus sums up His work. He has made the mind of God 
luminous and intelligible to man. So His prayer is that God may glorify 
Him, that is to say, that God may crown Jesus as the interpreter of God to 
man. Now is not this what we mean when we call Him the Saviour? 
How are we saved? Why, we are saved by understanding God. We are 
saved by understanding what is deepest in life and God is the deepest 
thing in life. Salvation consists in apprehending God’s mind about us, 


and Christ’s prayer is that God may crown Him with the single glory of 


being accepted by man as the interpreter of God to man. 

In vs. 2, 3, we are given Christ’s definition of eternal life. ‘This is 
life eternal that men may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ 
whom Thou hast sent’. Now let us try to give to ourselves a simple defini- 
tion of what we mean by eternal life. What I mean by it is a kind of life 
wherein life completely controls the machinery of life. That, to me, is the 
life eternal, a kind of life so rich and deep that life controls its machinery. 
One does not realize eternal life very often in this world, but once in 





THE UNI1TY OF CHRISTIANITY. 313 


a while one does realize it, live it out. There are certain rare moments 
when the machinery of life is totally lost sight of in living: and life eternal, 
simply defined and apprehended, is just the art of so living that all the 
machinery of life is controlled by life itself. As a rule, we Christians so 
live that the machinery controls life. Any pastor who does not know this 
knows very little about his trade. It is the disease of the ministry—we 
ministers know it to our shame—it is the disease of the ministry that the 
machinery of the ministry oftentimes controls and dominates the life of the 
minister. Committees and societies of all kinds sometimes take the heart 
out of a minister. But there are rare moments when life controls all the 
machinery of life, and that is what we mean by the life eternal. So, life 
eternal is to know deeply the mind of God as Jesus publishes it, and only 
so can one have eternal life. 

The central thought in the next section into which I have divided the 
chapter for the purpose tonight, namely, vs. 4-8, is the thought of the 
church. The language here does not use the term church. Sometimes the 
best way of thinking about a thing is not to nameit. Jesus had not read 
Hobbes. But He was too great a teacher not to know the law which 
Hobbes lays down, that words are wise men’s counters and the money of 
fools. The best way, sometimes, to think about a great thing is not to give 
it a definite name, for, when once you have named it, you are apt to think 
that you know it. How amusing it is sometimes to watch children. They 
come up to you with a problem and ask you to name it, and the moment 
you name it you settle it for them, and they put it aside. Names are some- 
times the soporific of thought, so it is well that the church should appear 
here in thought and not in name. 

I venture to think that the thought of the section is this: the ultimate 
heresy is our unwillingness or inability or incompetency to believe the best 
things about ourselves. Now, at first blush, that may seem a very foolish 
assertion to make. Slow to believe the best things about ourselves? Why, 
are we not filled with egotism? Are we not consumed with pride and 
vain glory? Do we not spend our lives in mutual admiration societies 
on the basis that we are to say pleasant things about other people 
with the understanding that they will reciprocate by saying pleasant things 
about us? And does not the church resemble such a society? Is it not an 
absurd thing to say that we are slow and unwilling to believe the best 
things about ourselves? Not a bit of it. It depends upon what we mean 
by the “best things”. The best things are righteousness and truth, and 
they mean unlimited capacity for God and the good. This we are very 
slow to believe in and trust ourselves to. But this is the very essence of 
the Christian church, to teach men to believe the very best things about 
humanity. For the church rests upon the Incarnation, and unless the 
Incarnation is a big word covering up a very small meaning, this is the sum 
and substance of it. It is God’s way of teaching us that God believes that 
we, sons of God, are capable of understanding God, of imitating Him, and 
of obeying Him to the uttermost. That is what the church of God is, a 


314 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


society which Christ has ordained to make men believe the very best things 
about themselves. 

In the next.section of the chapter, vs. 9-11, the central thought is that 
it is through the church that Christ is to be glorified. ‘I have been glori- 
fied in them”’, He says. That is to say, without the church, Christ is asa 
man whose right arm is gone. Without the church, the Incarnation is like 
a blow under the water. The church is Christ’s means of making His 
mind intelligible to the human race. And the church is to look to it that 
she does not, by her false definition of God, by her false conception of 
authority, by her false conception of unity, rob her Lord of His crown. 
And she robs God of His crown when she puts her interpretations of Christ 
between Him and the race He is seeking to save. 

In the next section of the chapter, vs. 12-18, there are two main 
thoughts, that is, two main thoughts for my purpose at this moment. The 
first of these is the thought of Christ’s joy as being fulfilled in those who 
believe in Him. Now, what is Christ’s joy? I believe there are two ele- 
ments in it, and that ultimately there are two elements in the joy of every 
imitator of Christ. First of all, it is the joy of a man who believes with all 
his heart in God. I repeat, it is the joy of a man who believes in God with 
all his heart. There is no joy like that of surrender to a great object. What 
is the true joy of a seeker after truth? That he may find the truth and 
surrender himself to it. What is the joy of the artist, seeker after beauty, 
but to find beauty and give himself to it? And what is the joy of the 
soldier when he has found the chance to offer his life for Fatherland, but to 
surrender to it? The joy of Christ is the joy of complete surrender to 
God. And this is the joy of the imitator of Christ. 

The other aspect of Christ’s joy is that of complete faithin man. I 
repeat, complete faith in man. How apt we have been to disconnect these 
two things. Faith in God we have been constantly talking about, but faith 
in man, how little we have spoken about that. But we cannot separate the 
two. What the Christ wanted to do was to make the two inseparable in 
our thought and life. Complete faith in God leads to absolute faith in man. 
What joy is there like unto the joy of him who, believing perfectly in God 
and in the capacity of man for what is best, can devote himself to making 
what is best intelligible to man? 

In v. 19, we come to the deepest waters of the chapter, or, if one may 
change the figure, we come to the summit point of the context somewhat 
abruptly. We see the great High Priest offering up to God our humanity, 
which He has taken upon Himself. The Son of God takes our humanity 
upon Him, and by His offering to God rids it of its vanity and imperfec- 
tion. We see the Son of God in His prayer to God saying for us, ‘‘I for 
My friends’ sake consecrate Myself”. Now, what does consecration 
mean? The scientist consecrates himself when he absolutely surrenders 
himself to the energy and power and law and mind of this mighty universe. 
Christ consecrates Himself when for love of His fellow-men He absolutely 
surrenders Himself to the power and mind and law of God. And it is all 





THE UNITY OF CHRISTIANITY. 315 


done for the church’s sake, that the church, they who call themselves 
Christians, may through Him be consecrated in the truth. Our English 
language here is defective and at fault in translating the Greek, for the 
Greek word a/etheia, is a very large word. We need two words to render 
it, “truth” and “reality”. This, then, is the prayer Christ makes, that we 
may be hallowed and consecrated by complete self-surrender to the truth 
and reality of God. 

In the next section, vs. 22, 23, we come upon the objective point of the 
chapter, namely, Christian unity. ‘‘ That they may be one as we are one”. 
How are we to reachunity? God forbid that in these days, which have no 
theology, and which are so conceited that they think they do not need it,— 
God forbid that I should say a word to decry theology. For a man who 
goes about the church today with his eyes open, sooner or later must make 
up his mind that what the church needs above all things is a sane theology. 
Just at present our theology is in a mental state that might fairly be called 
mush, and we sometimes call our lack of clearness and definiteness toler- 
ance and charity. We need theology. You will not misunderstand me, 
then, when I say that we cannot reach unity through theology, if theology 
be the primary thing; and we cannot reach it through definition, if that 
be the primary thing. We need theology, but woe be unto us if our theol- 
ogy masters us instead of our mastering it. Woe be unto us if our defini- 
tion dominates us, for the object of a definition is to be the tool and servant 
of the mind. We need our definition, but it must be kept in its proper 
place and controlled by life. And I take it that the only way in which we, 
divergent members of the body of Christ, can be brought together is through 
a living revelation. It is well for us that, temporarily, we have lost our 
grip upon theology. It is well for us that, at present, we have lost our grip 
upon definitions, because the end of it all, if we know and believe that 
God’s hand is guiding us, the end of it all will be that we shall gain, some- 
how, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, a mighty feeling of the 
invading and penetrating and healing power of God. Experience is always 
greater than definitions, and definitions must go back into experience to be 
made over again. Our theology, our definitions and creeds, must descend 
into the truth and reality of God, if we are to come together and stay 
together. 

I must hasten on. The chapter closes with the great words, ‘‘ That 
the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them”. 
Itis only through the sense of the indwelling power of the personal Christ 
that we Christians of diverging creeds, of widely diverging ancestors, of 
hostile definitions, can come together. That means, I take it, that we must 
all strip our minds of our infallibility. There is nothing better than a good 
definition, and there is nothing more helpful than a clear and sane theology 
to keep the heads of Christians free from vanity and sentimental nonsense. 
But the bane of theology and definition is infallibility. We have to strip 
ourselves of that. I wonder if we can doit. We sons of men are born to 
infallibility as the sparks are to fly upward. Thus there is a tremendous 





316 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


lot of infallibility around. We all believe we are infallible, though our 
sister church, the Roman Catholic church, alone makes a profession of 
it. Steele’s witty saying about the difference between the Church of Rome 
and the Church of England is worth quoting at this point. “ Yes”’, he said, 
“the Church of Rome is infallible and the Anglican Church is never wrong”. 
That is the difference. We are all infallible in that sense, or pretty 
nearly so. 

Now I wonder if we can strip our minds of this infallibility which is 
just man’s cheap substitute for God’s truth, man’s cheap and easy substi- 
tute for God’s reality. If we are to reach anything like real church unity 
we must substitute the hard thing for the easy thing, and the costly thing 
for the cheap thing. But the hard thing and the costly thing is the real, 
vital sense of the invading and prevading and redeeming revelation of the 
living Christ. The easy thing is an infallible church, an infallible priest, 
an infallible theology. When once we have made up our minds that we 
have got it, we can put an insurance policy in our pocket, lay our heads on 
our pillow and go to sleep; and when we wake up, we shall waste some of 
our time in damning and excommunicating those who have not put their 
heads upon the same pillow. 

But this is ecclesiastical unity; the unity that Christ speaks of is the 
unity of Christians who have taken the hard and costly thing for their task 
and heritage. It is the unity of men who believe with all their hearts in 
God, and in man, and who, by means of that vital faith, keep their tra- 
ditions and their preferences under control. We are not called on to 
belittle our traditions. Mine are exceedingly precious to me, and so are 
yours, I doubt not, to you, or you would not be here. But the beauty of it 
is that we can, by the help of the living Christ, make our traditions our 
servants, keep them from dominating us. =From this point of view, one 
object of a good definition is that we may outgrow it. Put a definition 
between you and revelation and yougblock up the entrance to revelation, 
you shutfyourself off from its growth and stunt yourself. But keep your 
definition under control, and then it is fa road over which you go to a 
wider definition, if it please God to let you live long enough to find it, 
Your difference from your fellow Christian will inspire you to seek for your 
unity with him. Then you will thank God that all Christians do not think 
as you think. You will convert what you honestly believe to be your 
superiority over him into a means of approach to him. You will learn that 
in the kingdom of God as Christ bas built it, the objective point is differ- 
ence in unity. We are to abound in our differences from one another. 
We are not to be ashamed of that aspect of truth which the living God hath 
disclosed to us. Rather we are to be proud of it, to publish it by every 
means in our power. But we shall control it. We will not let it control us. 
The love of God is in us all. His living revelation fills our hearts. 
Because we differ, we agree to glorify Him who causes us to differ. So, 
shall He, like the master of a great chorus, bring out of our diverse tradi- 
tions and interpretations, a grand hymn of praise to the only true God and 
to Jesus Christ whom He hath sent. 


*SANCTIFICATION IN THE TRUTH. 
(ST. JOHN 17:17-19.) 
BY REV. D. W. FAUNCEH, D. D., 


PROVIDENCE, R. I. 


The committee has assigned to me the central petition in Christ’s great 
High Priestly prayer, as recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John’s 
Gospel at the seventeenth verse. It reads as follows: ‘‘Sanctify them in 
Thy truth, Thy word is truth”’. 

Let me read, that you may have the connection, the verses that_imme- 
diately precede and follow. I read from the Revised Version, v. 14, 
““T have given them Thy word”’; v, 16, ‘“‘ They are not of the world even as 
I am not of the world”; v. 17, the verse we are to consider, reads: 
“‘ Sanctify them in Thy truth; Thy word is truth”. And this is followed, in 
v. 19, by the words: ‘‘ For their sakes I sanctify Myself that they also may 
be sanctified in truth”’. 

In reading these tenderly expressive words, I have not heeded the 
request of one of the most intelligent and devout Christians I have ever 
known. ‘Pastor’, she said, “‘please never read that prayer in the seven- 
teenth of John in public again”. The pastor supposed there had been 
some mistake in emphasis. ‘Oh no, not that”, was the quick reply, ‘“ but 
this: that prayer of love and agony should only be read when one is alone, 
on his knees and in tears”’. 

We sympathize with the devout feeling so earnestly expressed. But 
we are permitted, also, to remember that devotional study may be as 
devout as prayer itself. Our Lord, in the gift of the promised Holy Spirit 
to John, caused this prayer to be put into the record. We may, then, be 
permitted to read it, to study it, and to attempt its devotional interpreta- 
tion. Devout students in all ages have felt that through these central 
words in this central part of this great prayer, we get further back into the 
depths of Christ’s own soul than through any other words that ever fell 
from those holy lips,—‘“‘ Sanctify them in Thy truth; Thy wordistruth. For 
their sakes I sanctify Myself”’. 

In this devotional interpretation notice, first of all, that this prayer is 
the one true “ Lord’s Prayer”. In it He prays. By a mistake which it is too 
late in the centuries to correct, we are accustomed to call the prayer that 
begins ‘‘Our Father, which art in heaven”’, ‘‘The Lord’s Prayer”. But 
that prayer should have been called ‘‘the disciples’ prayer”. Our Lord 
does not even once use it Himself. He the rather puts it into the mouth of 


* Delivered at the Eighth Conference, held at All Saints Memorial Church, May 11, 1904. 


317 





318 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


His followers who had said, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his 
disciples”. That prayer is now known to be a compilation in part from 
Jewish prayers of thattime. The Jews of that age, following their Old Testa- 
ment, called God “ Father” in their prayers. Jesus could never Himself 
have employed one of the petitions in that prayer,—‘ Forgive us our tres- 
passes’. No perfect soul can truthfully make use of those words. On the 
other hand this prayer —this sinless prayer of the seventeenth of John, 
which should have been called ‘‘ The Lord’s Prayer”, was prayed only by 
Him. It is so holy that on any other lips than His it would be profane. 
Even He could pray it but once. In it His heart found its holy vent. 
Though in one part of it He prays for His disciples, He does not notice that 
they are present. He is in His closet alone with God. They two, the 
Holy Father and the Holy Son are speaking with each other. They are in 
the very act of communing. Let us be still. The time, the place, the per- 
sons are sacred. ‘Let all the earth keep silence before Him”. 

Only that He left on record this prayer should we dare speak of it. 
But here it is; and therefore in no sense acting as spies on our Lord’s 
communings with His Father, we may, with hushed heart, venture to look 
and listen. 

And the ¢me when He offers this prayer is especially significant. He 
has so nearly completed His work that He conceives of it as already done. 
“TI have finished”, ‘I come to Thee”, He says. He is through with 
Calvary and the resurrection and ascension, in His thought: ‘I come to 
Thee”. Contrast with this prayer the petition popularly called the Lord’s 
Prayer, as to the time of their respective utterances. In the prayer He 
puts into the lips of disciples—the one commencing “ Our Father’’, He is 
teaching beginners in discipleship. Had that prayer been given further on 
in their development, would He have omitted from it the very things for 
which He afterwards told them to pray, viz.: the gift of the Holy Spirit, and 
the asking of all in His name? The prayer at that earlier time could not 
have had the fulness of the New Dispensation. Let me not be misunder- 
stood. That prayer, that ‘disciples’ prayer’’, was absolutely perfect for 
them at that time; and it is in its general form and its whole spirit, not 
so much a stiff mould as a generous and blessed model of prayer for all 
time. But what a contrast between that ‘disciples’ prayer” and this 
“Lord’s Prayer” in the seventeenth of John. It is not in John “Our 
Father”, the united petition of disciples, but it is “‘ Holy Father”, the 
single separate term of sole use in the intimate intercourse between God 
and His “Only Begotten Son” as that Son is about to resume the native 
heaven and the dateless years of His eternity in the bosom of His Father. 

Notice, also, the order of the petitions in this prayer. He prays first, 
(vs. 1-5) about Aimse/f that God will glorify Him. He prays second, (vs. 
6-19) for the Zwelve exclusively. We prays third, (vs. 20-26) for all future 
believers. 

Now it is of the utmost importance that we notice that the seventeenth 
verse, the verse which we are studying, comes in the second division, viz.: 


SANCTIFICATION IN THE TRUTH. 319 


that of the petition for the Twelve. He asks two things for His Twelve (a) 
negatively, that they may be “‘ kept from the evil” — or as the Revision has 
it, and very many other versions —that they may be ‘‘kept from the Evil 
One”. Then (b) comes the positive petition, ‘‘ Sanctify them in Thy truth; 
Thy word is truth ”’. 

‘‘Sanctify them’’; the word ‘‘sanctify”’ itself means to separate — 
simply that. The root idea of the word, taken alone, is not holiness but 
separation — separation not from what is impure but from what is common. 
It is constantly used in the Old Testament, not only about persons, but 
about things no longer common, because set apart for God’s peculiar 
service. Twice only does Jesus use the word about Himself. He says 
(John 10:36) that He ‘‘ was sanctified” z.¢., ‘‘set apart”, and “‘sent into 
the world”. In this prayer (v. 20) He says ‘‘I sanctify Myself”. God has 
“sanctified ” Him, z. ¢., set Him apart; and now, in view of the culminating 
cross and resurrection, He sets Himself apart, dedicating His final hours to 
His distinctively redemptive work. And here and now, He prays that the 
God who had thus sanctified, z. e., dedicated Him to a peculiar mission, 
would in like manner sanctify, dedicate, consecrate them to their mission, 
in furtherance of ‘the truth ”. 

And now with this idea of sanctification as a dedication and a conse- 
cration to one’s work, a meaning gained from Christ’s own use of the 
‘sanctify’, we can come back to our seventeenth verse, ‘“‘Sanctify them in 
Thy truth”. 

He has the Twelve in their peculiar needs exclusively in mind. See the 
exact position of these men. That they had been regenerated before He 
ever met them seems almost certain from His words ‘“‘ Thine they were ”— 
z. é., they were Thine before they were Mine. Then, next, they became His 
disciples, by believing that He was the Messiah. Next, they were chosen 
to become His apostles. They are soon to enter upon that apostolic work, 
and He prays for them. He says not one word about their personal 
character; not that personal character was unimportant. But He has, just 
now, another matter in view. Never such a mission before committed to 
any human being. And unless something special is done for His Twelve, 
His Gospel will fall stillborn, and the world will never know anything 
accurately about Him. He might almost as wellneverhave come. Upto this 
time they had constantly blundered, not about the facts — there they were the 
best of witnesses about matters of fact. But they had blundered about 
the meaning of the facts. They had lacked any comprehensive grasp of 
them. They had no idea of the relation of part to part and of each part to 
the grand whole of His mission. It needed something vastly more than 
that, that they should be perfected in personal character. They saw the 
things and heard the words ; but He had to tell them, not in any impatience, 
but in profound pity, ‘‘ How is it that ye do not understand?” Moreover, 
the greatest Gospel facts had not yet occurred — facts that would be the 
key to all the others. The Lord’s death and resurrection, clear to Christ’s 
forseeing eye, were hidden from the Twelve at that time. And Pentecost, 


+320 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


which would bestow upon them new vision, giving them the lacking grasp 
of related fact and correlated doctrine, had not come to them. But soon 
there would be light flashing back on all He had ever done and said. 
Soon—very soon —there would be a fulness of truth into which they would 
enter, as some of them had entered into that radiant Shekinah cloud on the 
Mount of Transfiguration. And this is His prayer, that when this time of 
revelation comes, they may enter into it; “‘ Sanctify them in Thy truth; Thy 
word is truth’. Notice the preposition our Lord uses. Scholarly criti- 
cism, as in the Revised Version, discards the,word “through” not so much 
as erroneous, but as lacking in fulness, and unites in translating ‘im Thy 
truth ” instead of “‘¢Arough Thy truth”. The conception is not only more 
correct but more significant. It is ‘‘zz the truth” as a man stands in the 
atmosphere that surrounds him on every side, and breathes in the vital air; 
‘7m the truth” as a man comes out of mist and even out of darkness and 
stands in the sunshine where all things are flooded in the light from the 
heavens above him; ‘27 the truth”’ as a man emerges from the loneliness of 
a solitary existence into a region throbbing with a new and intense life; 
‘7m the truth’? as in a shoreless ocean filled with the God whose great 
name is the God of truth, and whose Only Begotten Son can say “I am the 
Truth ’—the Truth itself. 

And notice how our Lord divides men, putting their moral positions in 
sharpest contrast. He says ‘in the world”’, and over against it He puts 
“in the truth”. He names the dominion of the Evil One as “in the 
world’, and puts over against it the ‘“‘in Thy Truth” of His Holy 
Heavenly Father. Here, as in all His teachings, He sees two antagonistic 
kingdoms, with their respective heads and members, their opposing 
principles and potencies, their utterly unlike aims here and ends here- 
after; and His conception is that every man is in the one or the other. 
And Jesus prays that these twelve men, while they must remain on this 
material earth so as to carry out His purposes, may not be morally and 
spiritually in the element which He calls “in the world”, but may be 
submerged and absorbed in that opposite element which He calls “the 
truth”. You will notice that Jesus uses first the definite article “the” 
truth, and then uses the personal pronoun “Thy”. The exact order of the 
Greek words is this: “ Sanctify them in the truth of Thine ’’—literally, 
“in the Thy —truth’”’. The Greek language has nothing more intense, 
distinctive, definite. The conception is one of separateness in that kind 
of truth which is itself separated from every other; that truth in which the 
mind of God especially works in the redemptive kingdom. 

And this point gained in our discussion, we may ask reverently and yet 
specifically, just what was comprehended by the term He uses in this 
prayer when He says “‘the Truth” or “the Thy—Truth”’, z. ¢., God’s truth. 
Plainly what He means here by ‘“ Thy Truth” is expressed by the phrase 
He makes exactly equivolent, “Thy Word”; ‘Thy Word is truth”. 
Remember our Lord’s Jewish birth and training. Our Old Testament 
was His Bible. He knew it, as none had ever known it before. Its 





SANCTIFICATION IN THE TRUTH. 321 


phrases came easily to His lips, He modeled His forms of speech on those 
in His Bible. He found in its earliest pages the idea of a God revealed 
as the ‘I am God”; a personal, and so a real God, over against the 
unreal and shadowy gods of heathendom; a God, who because He was a 
real God, was God over the whole realm of truth, and so was the very God 
of truth itself; and therefore the personal truth Himself. This God of 
truth Jesus found in His Bible, was always revealing Himself, manifesting 
Himself, uttering Himself in words—words that through the vocables of 
human language, became, whenever God used them, sanctified words as 
indicating their source and their consecration. Common words whenever 
used elsewhere, they were words set apart to a purpose when God em- 
ployed them. They were words of God’s truth, z.¢., God’s word. Jesus 
found in His Bible constant formulas like this, ‘‘the Word of the Lord”’, 
“the Word of God”. They were iterated almost to weariness ; so that where- 
ever not used they were always understood. They were not only in His 
Bible, but were in constant use among all the people He knew, as their 
names for their Bible. On occasion He quoted to them certain words in 
their Bible, and then called their Bible, as they themselves did, ‘“‘ The 
Word of God”’, saying as He quoted from it,—‘‘ The Word of God cannot be 
broken”. Quoting continually, He gives His Bible as final authority. He 
sharply distinguishes it from the ordinary Jewish literature, which He calls 
“The Tradition of the Elders”. In His Bible the longest Psalm, cut into 
portions under the letters of the alphabet for the temple service, contained 
not a verse in which this usage did not appear. Jesus born, bred, think- 
ing, teaching, in house and temple and by the wayside, in public, in pri- 
vate, was familiar with such terms. And can any honest man have one 
lingering doubt but that however much more He meant by His phrases 
“Thy truth” and ‘‘ Thy word”, He meant this much in His prayer, that the 
sanctification of His Twelve was in part to be accomplished in connection 
with the Book which He revered as “the Truth’’—the Book He set 
men to studying so that they might see in its predictions “the things con- 
cerning Himself”. He said, ‘‘Search the Scriptures’’—the Scriptures, 
in distinction from that vast mass of Jewish literature current in His time. 
Jesus saw in His Bible what the prophets themselves did not always see, 
the scarlet thread interwoven through all the fabric; the event to which 
every event recorded on its pages looked forward. And from the day 
when John the Baptist said, ‘‘ Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away 
the sin of the world”’, each step of our Lord’s life was a step towards that 
lifted cross and that emptied tomb. God had put the prophecy of it in the 
written Word. Jesus was to turn prophecy into fulfilment by the death He 
should accomplish at Jerusalem. But the Twelve did not yet see what the 
death and “the rising from the dead should mean”. And so He prays 
that they may have the sanctification in which they can see His true 
mission and so see their own. And then came Pentecost, with its first 
instalment of the answer. Then their vision was purged — then they saw 
as through God’s eye, as through Christ’s eye. Then their Bible was alert, 


in every book of it, with their newly understood Christ. Then the isolated 
events had related meaning in which He, and they with Him, were sancti- 
fied to a peculiar mission among men. 

Nor was the understanding of these events the all. Accurate record 
was needed, as a companion document for their Bible. For all the coming 
centuries there would be as much need of the record of the Christian facts 
as there had been of the occurrence of the facts themselves. Left alone to 
inexact human remembrance of them and to an unassisted sorting of what 
to record and what to omit; left to blunder about their meaning as they 
had done during His lifetime, their inaccurate narration of such tremen- 
dous facts would be worse than nothing. We can make mistakes enough 
without employing a mistaken guide. Such facts as these, as they must 
have more than human warrant, so the record of them must have more 
than human superintendence. It is plain that the only religion that can 
hold its place in the later centuries must he one that founds itself on 
historic facts recorded in authentic documents. Such documents must and 
will show something of the personality of their respective authors. God’s 
inspiration, securing accuracy, would no more change their individual 
style of writing than change the features of their individual faces. They 
would still be men, but men “‘ moved of God, and led by the Holy Spirit into 
all the truth ’’;— the Greek has the definite article ‘‘ the,” z. ¢., “all ¢#e truth”’. 
There would then be two things: First, a progressive document; one that 
goes on through the Old Testament into the New Testament; and then 
goes on through the New Testament as these men should give to the long 
centuries the facts and doctrines and duties that make up the Christian 
religion. A book that should give us only the zeé#gezst or “‘age-spirit” of the 
era when written, would show us only the degree of moral and religious 
development the world had then attained. So that, second, there would be 
need of a book which, while a progressive volume, should have in addition, 
that divine inspiration and revelation which would ensure its absolute 
trustworthiness ; its human and its divine guarantee alike given to the world. 
Take this perfect prayer of Jesus in the seventeenth of John, which so 
needs its perfect record. One sentence omitted, through John’s lapse of 
memory, one phrase supplied by him, and the whole devout world would 
feel the difference. The prenticed hand may spoil perfection of the statue 
as surely as the mailed fist of the iconoclast. The need of perfect record 
may be more consficuous in this perfectly holy prayer of our Lord, but it 
is not less real elsewhere. Do you wonder, then, that Jesus prays 
especially for men with such a unique mission—‘“ Sanctify them in Thy 
truth ; Thy word is truth”? 

Such was His prayer. And now what was the answer? It was this: 
Their first apostolic work was their personal testimony as to Christ’s 
resurrection. They publicly testified that they themselves had seen Him 
alive after His death on the cross; had seen the healed wounds, had eaten 
with Him, talked with Him and had been commissioned by Hin, after 
His resurrection. That fact established, all Christian facts would be 


322 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


SANCTIFICATION IN THE TRUTH. 323 


comprised in it. Resurrection proved previous and peculiar death, 
previous and peculiar life, previous and peculiar birth, previous and pecu- 
liar existence in a dateless eternity. There was to be a granite basis of 
veritable fact for Christianity. And this was it. Paul, in order to become 
an apostle and so be able to bear this witness with the others, had to see, 
on the way to Damascus, the Christ risen after His death, and to get from 
His lips the apostolic commission. First of all these men preached an 
oral Gospel. It was about “‘ Jesus and the resurrection”’. But, by and by, 
when chosen men came to write out the facts, doctrines and duties they 
had preached, their writings took two forms; the factual or narrative form, 
and the doctrinal form. Paul, whose four great Epistles were written 
before any one of our four Gospels, took the great facts, and looking back 
upon them through the lens of Christ’s resurrection —— remember He saw 
the risen Christ—conceived of them in their grandly comprehensive 
meaning in these Epistles which are the most primitive of our Christian 
documents. So that to get ‘back to Christ’’—nearest to Him through 
the earliest of the Christian documents—we must go back through Paul. 
Subsequently the four evangelists, giving us the great facts also, fill in 
with their delightful detail the sacred story of their ever blessed Lord. 
Those who wrote were supported by the consenting testimony of the 
other apostles; and so there was given to men, the world around and the 
ages through, the imperishable record of Christian fact, of Christian doc- 
trine and duty found in this New Testament. And so Christ’s prayer for 
them was answered and they were ‘“ sanctified in the truth ” as they entered 
into the new domain, breathed in the new atmosphere and felt the new 
vitality of this Gospel. 

Some interpretative inferences may be briefly named: 

I. Sanctification, whether for an ancient apostle or for a modern 
believer, is through a knowledge of the ‘“‘ Word of God’’. Contrasting the 
transient and imperfect Mosaic Dispensation with the perfect and per- 
petual Christian Dispensation, an inspired man has said, “ By one offering 
Christ hath perfected forever them that are sanctified”. We must know 
our Bibles; since the degree of sanctification must bear a relation to our 
knowledge of God’s Word. This peculiar Book must have its peculiar 
study. Some of us can remember that when in the district schools, Mil- 
ton’s “ Paradise Lost” was used in “‘ parsing’’, so called; the old fashioned 
grammatical exercise. But did any one ever come in that way to know 
Milton’s sublime Epic? To study the Bible merely as ‘“‘literature’’, as an 
exercise in ‘“‘historic knowledge” or in ‘‘ pedagogic method ”’, is even less 
likely to give one an understanding of the Sacred Volume and to sanctify 
the man who does it. “Literary study” alone, or “historic study ”’ alone, 
in college, in seminary, in Sunday-school, or even in the closet, is liable to 
result in misapprehension. You may noi, must not study it as you study 
any other book. Unique, let it have its unique method. Christ is the focal 
point to which every thing must be seen as converging, if you would know 
your Bible. ‘To Him give all the prophets’’—and every historian was 


324 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


also a prophet—‘‘ witness”. All gathers in Him. Among the mountains 
in summer I meet men who are making sketches. They transfer to one 
canvas a rock, to another a tree, to a third that mountain and that cloud. 
By and by these bits of loveliness are all to be assembled into one completed 
picture. So each separate virtue shown by any man mentioned with ap- 
plause in this volume, is gathered up, made perfect and exemplified in Jesus 
Christ. It is the same with all events in Biblical history. Seen with anointed 
eye, they are to be studied in their inexhaustible connection with this inex- 
haustible Christ. We are to be “sanctified in the truth”. “Thy Word”, 
said Jesus, looking up into the consenting eyes of His Father —“ Thy 
Word is truth”. 

II. Sanctification is also the experience, in the depths of the human 
soul, of God’s truth. The only subjective Christian experience that has 
any value is that wrought by the objective Christian facts made potent by 
the Holy Spirit. Hence we distrust all visions, dreams, impressions, im- 
pulses to do strange, unauthorized things. All is to be tested by the Word. 
And because you have not as yet come up and on and into the experience 
of a clearly narrated truth, do not discard it. To do that would be to make 
your own Bible rather than to take God’s Bible. The man who puts his 
intellectual understanding, his moral intuition or even his alleged Chris- 
tian experience as the sole test, is a man who allows God to teach him 
nothing. Nor hesitate, because, like all other truth, God’s revealed truth 
has its mysteries. 

A scout, when an exploring party was seeking the Pacific, mounting 
a hill, cried out, “I see it”. ‘See what?” shouted the leader. ‘“ The 
Pacific’’, was the answer. ‘‘ How wide is it?” ‘About ten miles”’, 
answered the scout. ‘Ah!’ replied the leader, “if it were the Pacific 
you could not see across it”. Let us learn that truth is always wider than 
our present experience of it. Truth, distrusted in the impatience of youth, 
gets itself believed in the stress of middle life, and fully trusted, as the 
very sheet anchor of hope, in the experiences of age. Much of God’s 
Word awaits our better understanding of it in the experiences of eternity 
when we shall study it in the light of the countenance of God Himself. 

A few parenthetic words just here, may not be out of place about 
things outside ‘the Word ”’, which are sometimes thought to have sanctify- 
ing power. 

In the presence of Niagara, there is awe; but the man who experi- 
ences it may be an infidel. In the presence of Munkacsy’s “ Christ 
Before Pilate”, sympathetic emotion may be stirred in any unregenerate 
man. A song on “Calvary” drew tears from the one who had wept as 
freely at the theater over the play, the same evening. Touched by the 
tones of a soprano in a church choir a man swore that the solo was finely 
rendered. Esthetic feeling is not to be confounded with Christian ex- 
perience. But when, first of all, the soul in its deepest depths has been 
really regenerated by the Holy Spirit, as He applies to it the great Chris- 
tian truths, then esthetic feeling, like every other natural impulse, receives 


SANCTIFICATION IN THE TRUTH. 325 


its sanctification through the vital experience of God’s truth. Mountain 
and plain, river and sea, God’s sunrise and His sunset, man’s picture and 
song are seen by the vital eye, looking through the new moral atmosphere 
of God’s revealed Word ; are seen as “ sanctified ” objects, and so are made 
subservient to the soul’s sanctification. Last night at midnight a sharp eye 
could dimly discern a few things close at hand. This morning the sun rose, 
and the wide prospect from horizon to horizon was visible. Any single 
acre of it was worth more than the whole round world perpetually sunless. 
Well might Bushnell exclaim, ‘‘ This is another world since Christ came 
into it”. Jesus said, ‘I am the light of the world”. 

But there is a further sanctification, in which a@// knowledge in the 
realm of divine truth and a@// profound experience of it in the human soul, 
leads a man on to the sanctified doimg of God’s will. Jesus calls His fol- 
lower ‘“‘the man that doeth the truth”. Sanctification is not only of the 
head and the heart, but of the life. Only let us remember that the life is 
vastly more than the outward conduct. Life is that interior principle, the 
motions of which rule the exterior act. With this prayer of Jesus before 
us, let us seek to “‘ practice the presence of God”’ in the deepest activities 
of the soul when we are alone with Him, when He opens His heart to us 
and we open our hearts to Him; when we tell all our souls out to Him as 
never to nearest earthly friend, and He gives such communication of 
understanding in His revealed Word that we appreciate holy Rutherford’s 
phrase when he speaks of “revelling in the truth”. Such inward spiritual 
activity will save us from any superficiality in our religious life. Such 
‘practice of God” in the depths of the soul will make us grow, not as the 
dead stone by accretion of particles to its surface, but as the plant grows, 
by absorbing into its inward life that on which it can thrive. We shall crave 
seasons of prayer and of meditation, in which the closed door of the closet 
will shut out the world and shut us in with God. Then there will be given 
at one time the experience of ‘‘the green pastures and the still waters ”’ of 
God’s own peace; at another time, the experience of ‘‘the unspeakable 
joy’; at still another time, the consciousness of a strength not our own to 
to do or to suffer; and yet, again, some verse of God’s Word will be for us a 
Mount of Transfiguration, and heaven will seem to be opened. And it will 
be opened for us soon, not only in sanctified feeling but realized fact. One 
after the other we go into that world of eternal truth, to practice our- 
selves in those larger revelations that there await our coming. And what 
if our Lord, on the departure of each believer from the earthly service, 
looking up once more into the face of His Father, utters anew the final 
words of this wonderful prayer, now making it specific and personal, as He 
says,— ‘‘ Father, I will that [this man} whom Thou gavest Me be with Me 
where I am that [he] may behold My glory”. 


* THE SELF-SURRENDER OF JESUS CHRIST. 
(St. JOHN 18:11.) 
BY REV. GEO. M. STONE, D. D., 


PASTOR OF THE ASYLUM AVENUE BaptrisT CHURCH, HARTFORD, CONN. 


In the crisis of his Eden trial the first Adam surrendered to self, in the 
interest of pleasure. In the trial of the second Adam He surrendered to 
God, when the certain issue was suffering. Eden and Gethsemane are for- 
ever set over against each other in the spiritual history of man. One act 
drove the man forth to look backward upon a gate policed by the cherubim, 
the other ‘‘opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers”. The Self 
Surrender of Jesus Christ is inseparably connected with three truths, The 
Will of God, The Problem of Suffering, and The Salvation of Man. 

I. The immediate background of our Lord’s question,—‘ The cup 
which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?”’ was the Father’s ex- 
press will. ‘‘ My Father presents it. It isnot My natural human preference”. 
This gives us a humanity in Christ so genuine and essential as to be 
beyond impeachment. Paul holds fast by this when he says, in his great 
legal argument to the Romans,—“ For as by one man’s disobedience many 
were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made right- 
eous’”’. Besides, the whole hinge of Christ’s self-surrender turns upon His 
being truly man. The only and sole element in this cup, which made Him 
willing to drink it, was ‘he wi// of God. The cup was bitter of itself, beyond 
any ever before presented to man. The angels yet desire to look into it. 

Notwithstanding, it was mixed by the Father’s hand, its contents have 
never been brought under human analysis in the full depth and range of 
their severity. Hence the difficulty in formulating a satisfactory statement 
of the Atonement. The Nicene Council, led by 


“The royal hearted Athanase, 
With Paul’s own mantle blest”, 


was able to fix in the enduring form of sound words the truth concerning 
the person of Christ. But when [four Substitute was passing towards the 
shadow of His Cross, He said to His disciples, ‘Whither I go ye cannot 
come”. As there were bounds set about the fiery mount of the law, lest 
any should break through to gaze, so about the sacred precincts of the 


suffering and death of Christ, there were fixed bounds, which the human 
mind has not passed. There were unexplored remainders, and unrevealed 


abysses, in the chalice of the Garden and the Cross. The transaction was 


* Delivered at the Seventh Conference, held at the Central Congregational Church, April 13, 1904. 


326 





THE SELF-SURRENDER OF JESUS CHRIST. 327 


cosmic in its reach, since ‘“‘ He tasted death for every man”. It was no 
less sufficient to obliterate time periods, for ‘‘ this Man, after He had offered 
one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; from 
henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool. For by one 
offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified”. An earthly 
king can do, only the Prince of Peace can undo, and thus turn back the 
retributive sanctions of human sin. In the mid-sea of His agony on the 
cross, when the air was thick with portents, charged with the penalties of 
the world’s sin massed into one awful cloud, He cried out, “‘My God, My 
God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” For once He dropped the Father’s 
name and in those preternatural hours fell back upon the naked justice of 
a holy God. Let Mrs. Browning speak of the impossibility even there of 


His desertion : 
“Deserted! God could separate 

From His own essence rather, 

And Adam’s sins have swept between 
The righteous Son and Father ; 

Yea, once Immanuel’s orphaned cry, 
His universe hath shaken, 

It went up single, echoless, 
My God, I am forsaken”. 


The voluntary element in the selfgiving of Christ must not be over- 
looked in any just estimate of it. The objection to the idea of one man 
suffering in the place of another has overlooked the fact of personal will 
and deliberate choice in the matter. Even yet, it is difficult for men to see 
that our Master was not compelled to suffer by the decision of the Jewish 
Sanhedrin or the sanctioning injustice of the Roman governor. One of 
the most notable of His sayings, in view of the cross, was His word to His 
own zealous disciple, Peter: ‘‘ Put up again thy sword into his place; for 
all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou 
that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give Me 
more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be 
fulfilled, that thus it must be?” 

In effect He informs Peter how paltry his defence must be, when the 
serried columns of the celestial host were waiting to move upon His foes at 
the slightest signal from Himself. Earlier than this, Jesus uttered the 
classical declaration upon this fact of voluntariness in His suffering: 
“Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I 
might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of 
Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. 
This commandment have I received of My Father”’. 

II. Not otherwise than by voluntary suffering could our Lord fill up 
the outline of prophecy. The animal sacrifices of the Jewish system failed 
in this voluntary element. For 1,500 years ‘“‘dumb driven cattle ” were led 
unwillingly to the altar and slain. And yet the offerer laid his hands upon 
the victim before its life was yielded up, thereby indicating that guilt was 
transferred to it, as in a picture. But these repeated offerings were only 


symbols used for a term to foreshow One who should take our burdens and 
do so of His own free and self-chosen will. How clearly is this stated in 
the great historic comparison made by the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. ‘For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats 
should take away sins. Wherefore, when He cometh into the world, He 
saith, sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not, but a body hast Thou pre- 
pared Me: In burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast had no pleas- 
ure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of Me) 
to do Thy will, O God”’. 

Frequently the law did not look beyond the shadow to the Coming 
Person of the Messiah. But when He appeared, men of insight, like the 
Forerunner, immediately saw it. Most clearly of all, our Divine Master 
recognized this suffering and dying for others, as an essential part of His 
mission. It was very difficult for the disciples—especially in view of 
Christ’s manifested power —-to understand this. They could not see how, 
with such reserve of power at command, He could submit to His enemies. 


328 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


The same principle of help and suffering for another’s sake is found 
embedded in nature, in society and in individual human life. Throughout 
the whole sphere of the natural world one thing seems to exist for another. 
The forces of nature join hands for mutual help. It is Ruskin, who says, 
“Tt is the working, and walking and clinging together, that gives their 
power to the winds, and its syllables and soundings to the air, and their 
weight to the waves, and their burning to the sunbeams”’. 


Society is knit together by bonds of helpful union. The exchanges of 
commerce are the contribution of one part of the world to make up the 
deficiencies of another. What is the whole system of insurance, fire and life, 
but a plan to enable those who are fortunate to aid those who may be less so? 
The flame-swept city of Baltimore is now receiving millons of money from 
outside insurance companies to rebuild its desolate sites, because this prin- 
ciple has been organized into avast business system. Even the professions 
are built in good measure upon the same basis. The physician studies the 
human body in my behalf—I have not time or opportunity. 

And how in the whole range of common life, in the family and with 
individuals, we are living and dying one for another! Mothers yield up 
their lives for their children. How willingly are such sufferings endured! 
‘“* Many waters cannot quench love”’, and many barriers cannot interrupt its 
mission. 

The noblest part of natural history is connected with the fact of a 
bitter cup. The flag we honor has been baptized in blood in manifold 
wars and revolutions. It is like a palimpsest upon which one period of 
sacrifice has been written over another, until it bears successive legends of 
sacrifice. 

III. The rank of Christ in this procession of those who love and 
suffer for others’ sake is the highest. As ‘the Bloody Angle” on Ceme- 
tery Hill, at Gettysburg, was the high-water mark of the civil war, so His 


THE SELF-SURRENDER OF JESUS CHRIST. 329 


cross was the highest stage ever reached by sacrifice, of one persen for 
another’s good. If we consider the dignity of the sufferer as the Son of 
God, and the depth of His sorrow as our surety, Calvary is the central 
spot in this world of sin and suffering. Even the dying thief discovered 
the innocence of Christ and said to his companion, “‘ We suffer justly, but 
this Man hath done nothing amiss”. The cross cannot be explained as 
something endured by our Lord on His own behalf. This deed of expi- 
ation was for us. If we raise the question, why could not God forgive 
without it? We reply, something was due to law broken, and society 
injured. Even the civil state does not forgive upon repentence simply. 
It requires an expiation, a time of liberty restricted, and service rendered 
for the damages inflicted upon the social order broken. The expiation of 
Christ was witnessed by other than human eyes. The company grouped ~ 
around the cross constituted only a small part of “the great cloud of 
witnesses ”’. 

For this event was to reach depths in the heart of God which no one 
of the heavenly host had known, and hence, ‘‘ peace through the blood of 
His cross, reconciles all things unto Himself, whether they be things in 
earth, or things in heaven”. Now we behold the Father moved by the sin 
and sorrow, the distress and anguish of men to such a degree as to take it 
upon Himself as His own suffering burden. For z#zs His burden. The 
-Son of God was a personal volunteer, dying at the same time for man’s sin 
and God’s holiness. 


“The Saviour, what a noble flame 
Was kindled in His breast, 
When, hasting to Jerusalem, 
He marched before the rest ! 


“ Good-will to men, and zeal for God, 
His every thought engross ; 

He longs to be baptized with blood, 
He pants to reach the cross. 


“ With all His sufferings full in view, 
And woes to us unknown, 
Forth to the task His spirit flew; 
’T was love that urged Him on”. 


The question of the Father’s implication in the sufferings of the Son 
cannot be dismissed at this point. A great scholar has said of the mystery 
of the Trinity, that our lips can only stammer when we attempt to define it. 
And the question of the Father’s sufferings is one about which we may 
humbly employ the Psalmist’s words: ‘‘Such knowledge is too wonderful 
for us; it is high, we cannot attain unto it”. Still it remains true for us 
that He who suffered, said, ‘‘ He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father ”’. 
If it be so that the mystery of suffering reaches up to the highest form of 
being in the universe, and inflicts its profoundest pains in the heart of the 
Eternal Father, we may discover here the most effective motive and lever- 
age to induce the sinner to repent. 





330 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


A late writer furnishes me with this incident: 

“Tn a boys’ school in Boston a form of discipline was once introduced 
which might be called a judgment infliction of unique character. For a 
certain transgression, the master himself, instead of the pupil, was to receive 
the punishment. The first time it was applied the guilty scholar broke 
down, and the school broke down. In principle, this gracious judgment- 
infliction was akin to that which under grace is applied in the Atonement ; 
and for a saving mastery over human nature, the principle is unequalled”’. 

The contention of Professor A. R. Wallace in his bold speculation enti- 
tled ‘‘ Man’s Place in the Universe’, has been in brief terms summarized by 
a personal friend. This is its contention: ‘‘ That our earth lies near the 
center of the Milky Way; that it is the only inhabited or habitable spot in 
the physical universe; that man is the consummation of the whole cosmic 
process; that the whole ordered creation comes to its crown on this planet 
and in the human species. I say it may be a mere speculation, though he 
is one of the foremost scientists of the world who has indulged in it. 
Whether it be a speculation or not to say that the earth is the focus of the 
cosmic movement, it is not speculation to say that the focus of the historic 
human movement is the Incarnation of the eternal Son of God in the 
person of Jesus of Nazareth. The learned man, therefore, is the man who 
recognizes Christ, not only as ‘the sublimest image ever offered to the 
human imagination’, but as the heart of the heart of the universe, without 
Whom, and apart from Whom, knowledge is empty of life, a formula vacant 
of power, a shell without a kernel; in Whom the physical creation finds its 
bond —for in Him all things hold together—and in Whom the world of 
human knowledge finds its glory and its crown”’. 

There is a majestic sweep of vision in the conception, which is not an 
unworthy echo of the highest attitudes of inspired thought in Paul, and 
which suggests a possible outcome of the bitterness of Christ’s cup, quite 
as inclusive as anything in the present Epistles of the great Apostle. 

IV. Our last general consideration leads up to the relation between 
Christ’s self-surrender, and our recovery from sin. Self-surrender is the 
crucial point for the sinner. Here, indeed, the King sets the fashion of the 
court. When a few years since a distinguished theological teacher affirmed 
that the supreme business of the preacher was to induce men to obey Christ, 
considerable adverse criticism was aroused. But there is no gospel in Old 
or New Testament for the disobedient man. The heaviest burden of a soul 
confirmed in sin is God Himself, and so the fool hath said in his heart, 
‘“There is no God’’. He refuses to agree with his adversary, either quickly 
or slowly, but he is unable to dislodge Him, and hence his misery. I have 
heard of a new convert to atheism, who said to a coterie of fellow unbe- 
lievers, ‘‘I have gotten rid of the idea of a Supreme Being, and I thank 
God for it’. The God driven out at the front door re-enters at the back 
one, for the intellect of man is in revolt against the ungodly heart, and will 
assert its rights under the eternal franchises of reason. 

It is Browning who says: ‘I reportas a man may of God’s work— 


THE SELF-SURRENDER OF JESUS CHRIST. 331 


all’s Love. Yet all’s law’?! Herein the disciple is not above his Lord, or 
the servant above his Master. But if the cup with its bitter ingredients is 
presented to us by our Father, as that of our Saviour was presented to Him 
by His Father, we may avail ourselves also of His sufficient consolation. 
In His memorable prayer before the Garden and the Cross, He bridges 
over both, as His holy soul rests upon the consummation of both, in the 
measureless joy which was to succeed “the sharpness of death”. The cup 
was not -an end for Him, great as it was, and it behooves us to relegate it 
habitually to its place. The gréatest of modern essayists has said, ‘“‘ The 
pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of 
Job than the felicities of Solomon”. But the felicities of Solomon were 
not to be reckoned with the glory visioned by Paul. In the light of the 
latter, we may even challenge Longfellow’s couplet, 


“ Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 
Is our destined end or way”, 


for our gospel carries the golden bribe of righteous, enduring joy. Not the 
wilderness, but Canaan, was the end for Israel. The first question and its 
answer, in the old Catechism, is the summary of the best theology: ‘‘ What 
is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever ”. 

Beautiful words are those of Lanier, in his Ballad of Trees and the 
Master : 


“Into the woods my Master went, 
Clean forspent, forspent. 
Into the woods my Master came, 
Forspent with love and shame. 
But the olives they were not blind to Him; 
The little gray leaves were kind to Him; 
The thorn tree had a mind to Him, 
When into the woods He came. 


“ Out of the woods my Master went, 
And He was well content. 
Out of the woods my Master came, 
Content with death and shame. 
When Death and Shame would woo Him last, 
From under the trees they drew Him last, 
’Twas on the tree they slew Him—last 
When ont of the woods He came. 





* THE CRUCIFIXION—“IT IS FINISHED”. 
BY RT. REV. THOMAS A. JAGGAR, D. D., 


BISHOP OF SOUTHERN OHIO. 
(St. JOHN 19:30.) 


When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar He said, “It is finished”. And 
He bowed His head and gave up the ghost. 


I have approached with awe the study of this, the most pregnant word 
in all history. How should I presume to look into the depths of the 
consciousness which, with almost its last breath in time, sounded the trumpet- 
note—jinished / To speculate has seemed to me presumption. I have not 
dared to adopt the method of critical exegetes, who seem to jostle one 
another with fierce disputings around the cross. Many of them interpret 
it by the glory which followed—the Resurrection, Ascension and coming 
of the Holy Ghost. 

I have chosen to ‘learn of Him” and by all that He has revealed of 
His consciousness, to travel up from the human side to all that we may 
know of this last word. I would find in the Christ His own interpreter and 
put no more into the word than He permits me to see there. 

We are to ask, then, what this word must have meant in His conscious- 
ness, when, with a loud voice, ‘‘He bowed His head and gave up the 
ghost”, 

The words I shall use will be largely the words recorded of Him or 
spoken by Him. 

The words which tell us all that we know of His childhood and youth 
are like the lines of some fine etching—few but strong and full of meaning. 
““The Child grew and waxed strong, filled with wisdom and the grace of 
God was upon Him”’. There was a genius for divine things and a divine 
inspiration which kept it alive, and made it more and more appreciative as 
His years increased. His quiet home at Nazareth afforded no great oppor- 
tunities for religious instruction. But nature was beautiful, and the train- 
ing of a Jewish home, and certainly the home of Joseph and Mary, would 
insure that from a child He would know the Scriptures. Probably He went 
with other children to the synagogue school, and sitting at the feet of the 
scribe, learned His earliest earthly lesson from the Book of Leviticus. He 
would attend the services of the Synagogue, where Moses and the prophets 
were read and occasional addresses delivered. A mind like His would be 
open to all the religious discussions around Him; and all the story of Israel 


* Delivered at the Seventh Conference, held at the Central Congregational Church, April 13, 1904. 


337 


THE CRUCIFIXION —“IT IS FINISHED”. 333 


and Israel’s hope would be a growing wonder to Him. It is said of Schu- 
bert, the German composer, whose musical genius, like that of Mozart, was 
born with him, that ‘his teachers had nothing more to do than to enlighten 
him as to that which lay in a state of semi-consciousness, as law, wz‘hin 
him”. The phenomenon, on the natural plane, of genius like that may 
reverently be used to illustrate the genius of Jesus for religion. We can 
understand how, from a child, as He was hearing of sacrifices, and burnt 
offerings, and sin offerings, there would be a semi-consciousness of some 
coming harmony—the harmony predicted by the Psalmist, ‘‘ Lo, I come; in 
the volume of the Book it is written of Me, to do Thy will, O God! yea, I 
delight to do it. Thy law is within My heart”. 

We are not surprised to find Him, at twelve years of age, in the “ midst 
of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions”. He passes 
by the sights of the holy city and seeks the schools of the Rabbis. The 
promise of the Child—the wisdom and the grace—is budding in the Boy. 
I need not dwell upon the familiar incident. ‘“ The law in His heart” finds 
expression in the penetrating questions which He asks. The learned Rabbis 
are astonished at His understanding and answers. He feels that there 
must be larger meanings, some fuller inspiration beneath the letter of the 
law, which, with all its subtleties, they expound to Him. They wondered 
where this Galilean Boy had acquired His wisdom. He does not presume, 
but He is deeply stirred. A consciousness that He has something to teach 
and to do for God and His people deepens within Him. It speaks when 
His seeking parents find and gently chide Him: “‘ Wist ye not that I must 
be about My Father’s business?” or, in My Father’s house? “My 
Father!’”’ His mother, at His birth, had kept all the wonderful sayings 
about Him, and pondered them in her heart. But think of the distance 
now between His conception of God’s purpose in Him and His relation to 
God, and even a mother’s thought. We find the word Father used of God 
in a very few passages of the Old Testament, but never to describe His 
relations with the individual. Jesus says “‘ My Father ” with perfect artless- 
ness and freedom from presumption. He thinks aloud, and the truths 
which have been stirring in Him are revealed. The spirit of the Boy has 
been growing into a conscious fellowship with God—a fellowship so close 
that, when He speaks now, His earthly ties seem far away and the Father 
of His spirit the only reality. 

But He patiently goes down with them to Nazareth and is subject 
unto them. 

Eighteen years pass before ‘“‘ The voice of one crying in the wilder- 
ness, prepare ye the way of the Lord”’, revived the dying hope of Israel. 
It seems to have been to our Lord the signal for action. The conscious- 
ness that He ‘‘ proceeded forth and came from God” had been deepening 
within Him, and now the time had come to put Himself on the side of the 
reform which John preached. The “repentance”’, I need only remind 
you, was “achange of mind’. It meant, as a preparation for the king- 
dom, a thorough revolution and readjustment of thought in the earthly 


334 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


minds of the multitude. They must change their earthly, selfish, ambitious, 
literal and formal conceptions of the kingdom, and expect a kingdom which 
would account him only a descendant of Abraham, who is one inwardly, 
cutting down the proud pretensions of those ‘ who bring not forth good 
fruit”. There could be no such change of mind in our Lord. This was 
His mind. But John was preaching that preparation, which the ideal king- 
dom of His dreams demanded. It was clear to Him, that to do His Fath- 
er’s will, to ‘fulfil all righteousness’, He must put Himself openly into 
conformity with that preparation. He avowed, therefore, in baptism the 
change of mind. ‘And lo, the heavens were opened unto Him and He saw 
the Spirit of God descending as a dove and coming upon Him, and lo, a 
voice out of the heavens saying, this is My beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased ”’. 

The moment He adjusted Himself to John’s baptism “ unto a change 
of mind’’, His mission as the God-man dawned fully upon Him. Whatever 
we may think about the objective appearance to Him and His forerunner, 
something happened which convinced John that this is the Son of God— 
‘‘He that baptizeth with the Holy Spirit”’—and realized to Jesus the ful- 
ness of His Father’s presence and His anointing to be the Messiah of 
Israel. The law and the Gospel met in their representatives, and the Gos- 
pel was manifested at His baptism. ‘ The law and the prophets were”’, said 
the Lord, “until John; from that time the Kingdom of God is preached ”’. 

‘‘Tmmediately the Spirit driveth Him into the wilderness to be tempted 
of the devil”. It was the crisis of His life. Here He would determine 
how He should act in view of the opposition which He knew awaited Him. 
It is not essential to my purpose that I should delay here to enter fully into 
the circumstances, and the many interesting questions which invest the 
incident of our Lord’s temptation. I have to do with it, on its subjective 
side, as an inward conflict which it certainly was, whatever the form may 
have been. Itis natural to suppose that, absorbed in a communion and 
rapt in meditations beyond our power to conceive, He remained long 
oblivious to the needs of the body. When Hecame back to the earthly 
realities, ‘‘He hungered’’. Immediately the tempter whispered, ‘“‘ If Thou 
be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread”. Why 
not? Hecould do it, for He was the Son of God. To feel the force of a 
suggestion which does not seem in itself to be evil, is not sin; but to see 
the evil in it, and even for a moment to acquiesce is sin. “‘ He was tempted, 
yet without sin’. The sense of His moral responsibility was too strong in 
Him for the pangs of hunger to overcome it. The suggestion was enough. 
For a moment He felt its power, but more probably in His reason than His 
appetite. But immediately the law in His heart disclosed the evil and 
answered for Him, and through Him to the tempter, ‘It is written, man 
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
mouth of God”. Because He was the Son of God, He would not command 
stones to be made bread for His physical needs. He was in the world to 
realize a kingdom which should not be “eating and drinking, but right- 





THE CRUCIFIXION—“IT IS FINISHED”. 335 


eousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost”. He must realize it by 
subjecting the prerogatives which He might exercise as a Son to the condi- 
tions of the humanity in which it was to be His sole business to manifest a 
life of the spirit. He must not save Himself. The flesh must be subdued 
to the spirit at every point where He might be tempted to help Himself. 

Adroitly the tempter adapts himself to the “‘ discovered mood ”’ of the 
Saviour’s soul. If you may not use your power for personal ends, surely 
you may presume upon your Sonship to cast yourself down from this pin- 
nacle of the temple, and, by one splendid exhibition of your divinity, pro- 
claim your Messiahship—for is it not written, ‘‘ He shall give His angels 
charge concerning thee: and in their hands shall they bear thee up”. It 
did seem as if some miracle like that might aptly introduce His work, and 
command at once the reverence and attention of the people. But, immedi- 
ately, the word in His heart detects and repels the suggestion. ‘Thou 
shalt not tempt the Lord thy God’. To determine where trust ends and 
presumption begins was for Him a difficult problem. He would not use 
His Sonship to save Himself. Could He dare too much upon His Father’s 
love and power? The point to be strongly emphasized is, that in all these 
temptations, He holds Himself firmly in the human relation, He meets and 
defeats them as a man, and in the obedience of God’s law for man. The 
temptation to presume is overcome by the determination to do His Father’s 
will as a man, never presuming, never challenging a miracle by exposing 
Himself wantonly or unnecessarily to danger or death, never assuming that 
He may dispense with prudence, forethought and the plodding drudgery of 
obedience. Satan, in the last temptation, boldly unmasks himself. He 
showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, ‘‘All will 
I give Thee”’, he said, “if Thou wilt fall down and worship me’. Won- 
derful issue—whether it be objective reality or vision. The anointed 
Christ—young and human—conscious of divine power—all the kingdoms of 
the world and the glory of them—ripe fora great leader—but the cost a 
compact with evil—the alternative a cross with such light of the unseen 
and eternal beyond, 

“As never was on sea or land”. 

The temptation was too coarse—it could only flash out its lurid blaze 
long enough to be seen, and then came the indignant reply, through which 
the God in Him gleamed like lightning, though it was still from the law in 
His heart that He spake, ‘“‘Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, thou 
shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve”’. 

Completely dispersed from that hour was every doubt as to the method 
which He must employ to prove Himself the Christ of God. He sees 
clearly that He may not save Himself—presume upon God’s help, nor win 
by popularity, compromise or conforming to the world’s ways. He is put 
upon His manhood. He knew that the world would be against Him. He 
is determined, now, to meet and overcome it as a son of man in fellowship 
with God, but walking with Him by faith, not by sight, and learning obedi- 
ence by the things which He must suffer. In all His ministry, from that 


336 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


time to the end, this conception of His work as something to be done in the 
body—subject to its limitations, needs, infirmities and pains is always 
present to Him. He put away from Him, as from Satan, the suggestion 
that He should assert Himself outside of those limitations or attempt to 
escape them when they pressed too hard. The words of the Psalmist, as 
they are rendered from the Septuagint, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
express at least the idea which possessed Him: “ Sacrifice and offering 
Thou wouldest not, but a body didst Thou prepare for me”. 

What, we may ask now, was His conception of the work to be done in 
the body? It is clear that, from the hour of His temptation, He was com- 
mitted to self-sacrifice. The shadow of the cross was upon Him, and it 
deepened in His consciousness down to the end. But the work to be done 
at such a cost ; what do we know about that? 

I do not find it necessary to limit myself, in the study of this question, 
to the Gospel of St. John, though I might properly do so, as the word 
‘‘ Finished”? appears only there, and the authority of that Gospel is, I 
assume, accepted by this Conference. 

As I study the story of His life variously recorded, I find that He 
began His ministry by preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom. I ask myself 
what is this ‘‘Good-news’’?? Many people, I believe, read the New Testa- 
ment, and are perplexed to know what the Gospel really is. I do not find it 
in the law of His kingdom, which He announces in the Sermon on the 
Mount. I am rather alarmed by its searching principles. But I do begin 
to catch some glimmering of the light in the words, ‘“‘ Think not that I came 
to destroy the law or the prophets; I came not to destroy but to fulfil—for 
verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle 
shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished”. I 
remember how, in another place, He ventures to make this same claim for 
His own words: ‘‘ Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My word shall 
not pass away’. He speaks as one who embodies in Himself the right- 
eousness of the law. The one lawgiver is, to Him, ‘‘ My Father which is in 
heaven’. ‘I came to fulfil”. Through all the teaching of the Sermon on 
the Mount, there is implied a fellowship like His own, with the Father who 
is in secret, or, ‘“‘ your Father which is in heaven ”’. 

I read on, and there is much about wonderful works, which are always 
done to help, not for mere display. I read of Scriptures to be fulfilled, 
which, I can understand, would be of special interest to His Jewish hear- 
ers. I find parables distinctly Jewish in their application, but, through all, 
there is ‘‘ One speaking with authority and not as the scribes”. I hear Him 
saying not only “‘A greater than Jonah” and a ‘Greater than Solomon”, 
but ‘“‘ One greater than the temple is here”. He claims “ power on earth to 
forgive sins’. And then I meet this saying, which is not surpassed in the 
depth of its spiritual meaning by anything in the Gospel of St. John: ‘All 
things have been delivered unto Me of My Father, and no one knoweth the 
Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and 
he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him”. And then the gracious 


THE CRUCIFIXION —‘IT IS FINISHED”. 337 


words, which show to whom He would reveal the Father and in that fellow- 
ship the secret of rest—‘‘Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden and I will give you rest”’! 

Reading on, I am struck with the suggestive difference between His 
sermon on the bread of life in the synagogue at Capernaum, and His talk 
to publicans and sinners later, as He went through the cities and villages 
teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem, and the last Passover. The 
sermon at Capernaum is a baffling enigma to His hearers, and undoubtedly 
He meant it to be so. He uses language entirely outside of their compre- 
hension. He leaves them baffled and asking, ‘‘ How can this man give us 
His flesh to eat?” But when He talks to publicans and sinners, while He 
is not unmindful of the Pharisees who stand by, criticising, He appeals to 
their hearts in parables which they could understand,—of the shepherd 
seeking the one sheep which was lost, of the woman seeking diligently until - 
she finds the lost piece of silver, of the prodigal son, that pearl of parables, 
in which the Father-heart which Christ came to manifest is so beautifully 
pictured. He did not put Himself into it because He was the Word from 
the Father, the Revealer, making known the Father’s heart to the sinner. 
In Him the Father was “ going out to meet the prodigal while yet he was a 
great way off”’. 

Matthew, Mark and Luke agree in their witness to the words which He 
spake at the last supper, ‘“‘ He took bread and blessed it and brake it; and 
He gave to the disciples and said, take, eat, this is My body: and He took 
a cup and gave thanks and gave to them, saying, drink ye all of it: for this 
is My blood of the covenant which is shed for many for the remission of 
sins”. John omits the institution, but the same conception appears in the 
sermon at Capernaum. “He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood 
abideth in Me and I in Him”. 

The doing and the teaching of Jesus find their unity in His person. 
The teaching, apart from the revelation of Himself, is fragmentary and 
unsatisfying. Allis clear, when we perceive the “I” in Whom all centers 
and from Whom the whole truth radiates. The good news of the kingdom 
isin Him. Law, temple, poetry and prophecy all converge in His person. 
He is the focal point of the historic past, and “‘ I am the light of the world” 
is His own word to all the future. When we read that Jesus did and said 
many things which are not recorded, we wonder that in a life so important 
more was not told. This is explained when we realize that the supreme 
purpose of the Gospels is to manifest a person, and not merely to record 
His sayings and doings. He Himself said to the disciples, “I have yet 
many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now—howbeit when 
He, the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth”. “He 
shall glorify Me”. He was to bein His own person, through death, the 
fuller revelation of the Gospel. 

When we pass from the Synoptists to the Gospel of St. John the spirit 
and the life appear in all their beauty. ‘‘We behold His glory as of the 
only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth”. It is distinctively 


338 THE GOSPEL OF ST./JOHN. 


the Gospel ina person. His own conception of God’s purpose in Him is 
clearly revealed. It is expressed in so many forms that we are bewildered 
in our effort to collect the scattered rays into some point of light where we 
may intelligently define it. Sometimes He has in view the objects of the 
purpose, and we hear Him saying, ‘‘ Come unto Me, all ye that are weary”. 
‘*T am come to seek and to save that which was lost”. “I came not to call 
the righteous, but sinners to repentance”. “If any man thirst let Him 
come unto Me and drink’. Sometimes His mind is full of the blessings 
consequent upon God’s purpose in Him, “ Ye shall know the truth and the 
truth shall make you free”. ‘‘I am the way and the truth and the life”’. 
‘*T am the resurrection and the life”. ‘‘ This is the will of My Father, that 
every one that beholdeth the Son and believeth on Him should have eternal 
life”. ‘‘I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on 
Me may not abide in the darkness ”’. 

Eternal life seems to have been the one inclusive end of the purpose; 
and that life, manifested in and to be realized through faith in the Son. 

When, therefore, we ask, as we approach the cross, what the work was 
which the Father had given Him to accomplish on earth, I think we may 
without presumption sum up the answer in these statements :— 


I 


He was fo show in Himself the creative idea of God in humanity. His 
being was to be a revelation. The purpose in Him went back before the 
law. He dared to say to the baffled, outraged Pharisees, “ Verily, verily, I 
say unto you, before Abraham was,I am”. They accused Him of breaking 
the Sabbath law. He justified Himself in the unearthly way of putting 
Himself with the eternal, above the laws of time, and into the moral and 
merciful purpose of the Creator Himself, saying, ““My Father worketh 
hitherto and I work”’. 

It was in a like consciousness of being above time that He uttered the 
_ words of the high priestly prayer before His death: “I am no more in the 
world and these are in the world and I come to Thee. O righteous Father, 
the world knew Thee not, butI knew Thee; and these knew that Thou 
didst send Me; and I made known unto them Thy name and will make it 
known; that the love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may be in them and I in 
them’”’. Who but a Jesus could have had this mind—a mind which soars to 
the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, and yet 
gathers humanity into a purpose which He here clearly reveals—the making 
known God’s name—Father—the manifestation in His own person of the 
filial oneness (as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee) and a wholly new 
relation, and indeed creation to be completed in a fellowship with the 
Father and the Son so real that the “love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may 
be in them and I in them’”’. Here is the whole divine idea. No mind of 
man could have invented it. In this spiritual oneness of the human spirit 
with the Father, through the Son, is the life eternal which He promised, 


THE CRUCIFIXION—“IT IS FINISHED”. 339 


“ This ”’, He said, ‘‘is life eternal that they might know Thee, the only true 
God and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent ”’. 

St. John in the proem of His Gospel formulates the creative purpose 
and carries us back to the Genesis. ‘‘In the beginning was the word and 
the word was with God and the word was God”. He was in the world and 
the world was made by Him and the world knew Him not. He came unto 
His own and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him to 
them gave He the right to become the children of God, even to them which 
believe on His name; which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the 
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”’. 


JOT 


The Christ was to make the creative purpose which He incarnated reat- 
izable by man. His obedience in the flesh was to be not a revelation only, 
but also a redemption. Sacrifice was present to Him from the beginning of 
His ministry. He was not like His disciples, ‘“‘slow of heart to believe all 
that the prophets had spoken’. He felt the shadow of the cross darkening 
upon Him in all the fierce antagonism of the world’s moral evil, personified 
in the rulers of His own people. How fully He realized the meaning of 
this antagonism, His own pathetic words show: ‘‘I am come to send fire on 
the earth and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism 
to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished”. It 
was at a later period when He was moving for the last time toward Jeru- 
salem that He taught His disciples the lesson of His great humility. ‘“‘ Even 
the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give 
His life a ransom for many ”’. 

It is evident that God’s purpose of realizing for humanity the life of 
Sonship with Himself, could, in our Lord’s view, be accomplished only 
through His death. How through death He would accomplish it, His 
words in the high priestly prayer seem to show—“ Father, glorify Thy Son, 
that Thy Son may glorify Thee. Even as Thou gavest Him authority over 
all flesh that whomsoever Thou hast given Him, to them He should give 
eternal life”. He had said before that, ‘‘ As the Father hath life in Himself, 
even so gave He to the Son also to have life in Himself and He gave Him 
authority to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man”. Clearly 
His idea is, that the life-giving authority committed to Him as the Sow of 
Man, must be gained through and by His death as its inevitable condition. 
We have the same idea expressed in His words to the disciples, “It is 
expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Comforter will 
not come unto you”’. 

He was to die, not merely to convict men of sin because they had killed 
the Prince of life and so to leave them more hopelessly remote from God. 
But He had put Himself into their case as the Son of Man, committed to 
bear all the consequences of their sin even to the shame and pain of being 
reckoned with the transgressors. He was empowered by the Father to act 
for man, judgment was placed in His hands, but there was no way by which 


340 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


He could gain His spiritual throne as the rightful head of a new, redeemed 
humanity save the way of perfect subjection to the eternal righteousness as 
man and for man, which was the way of the cross. His purpose was to 
‘save, not to destroy’, but to gain this power, which the Father had com- 
mitted to Him and which was the Father’s purpose in Him, He could not 
save Himself. 

Why it was necessary that He should bear our sins in His own body 
on the cross of a malefactor remains in all that He has revealed of His 
own consciousness a hidden mystery. But in some of His sayings there is 
a depth of insight which penetrates to the fundamental law of things. When 
they told Him that certain Greeks ‘would see Jesus’, He answered 
saying,—‘‘ Verily, verily I say unto you, except a grain of wheat fall into the 
earth and die, it abideth by itself alone, but if it die it beareth much fruit ”. 
He had identified Himself with the temple, saying in the full fruition of the 
Boy’s vision,—‘‘ Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”. 
Now He identifies Himself with the order of nature itself, in its deepest 
processes of evolution, and shows that sacrifice is a law of universal opera- 
tion and only out of a “self-renouncing, self-sacrificing resignation of all, 
the benediction of a richer fruitfulness, of a glorified and multiplied exis- 
tence, springs forth”’. 

He was the grain of wheat to be harrowed deeply into the earth. The 
harvest of that sowing would be bread forthe world. Alford truly says that 
the symbolism here lies at the root of that in Chapter 6 of St. John where 
He represents Himself as the bread of life and interprets it to be “‘ His flesh, 
which He will give for the life of the world”’. 

He had been born into the human conditions to reveal God’s creative 
purpose, to show to men, in Himself the possibilities of Sonship with the 
Father, to prove the reality of God’s loving purpose by bearing upon His 
own feeling their sorrows and sicknesses, by enduring their scorn with 
patience and making Himself the friend of publicans and sinners. But He 
was the grain of ‘“‘ wheat abiding alone by itself’? while He remained on the 
surface history. If He continued so, He would simply be living out the life 
of His divine kind apart and unproductive. It was a law inherent in the 
constitution of all nature, that the life of God in Him, in order to multiply 
itself in harvest upon harvest of elect souls, should in its human form be 
planted into death. 

He was thinking deeply into the same natural order, which was His 
Father’s creative order, and as much His Father’s will, as the ‘it is written” 
of Scripture, when He said to His sorrowing disciples—‘‘a woman when 
she is in travail hath sorrow because her hour is come, but when she is 
delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish for the joy 
that a man is born into the world’. His sorrow and theirs were all one, 
but the reality was in His deeper pain, and only through the travail of His 
soul could the new man be born into the world. 

That He did not fully understand the necessity which compelled the 
suffering of the cross, Hisown wordsshow. Three times as He approached 


THE CRUCIFIXION—“ IT IS FINISHED”. 341 


the end, His troubled soul speaks. He had compared Himself to the grain 
of wheat, and then the black realization settling like a thunder-cloud upon 
His soul, He cries: ‘‘ Now is My soul troubled and what shall I say—Father, 
save Me from this hour? But for this cause came I untothis hour. Father, 
glorify Thy name”’. We are reminded again of the temptation in the wilder- 
ness. ‘Shall I pray as all My human dread of deathimpels Me to do, 
Father save Me?” The spirit triumphs in the brave determination, 
‘“‘ Father, glorify Thy name!” What thoughts are stirred as we realize the 
consequences which seemed to depend upon His unfaltering courage in 
that hour. He was so truly human in the struggle here as elsewhere that 
we cannot doubt the reality of it, but being human, how one almost trembles 
to think that the second Adam was here put upon His trial, and.what if He 
had faltered and “‘saved Himself’? 

He became obedient unto death, but the death of the cross was only 
the physical ending of His “suffering of death”. That He made His 
“soul an offering for sin” in some mystery of mental anguish is apparent 
from the hour that He set His face toward Jerusalem. The sweat of blood 
in Gethsemane was the manifestation of an agony, greater than the pain of 
the actual cross. We cannot escape the conviction that the death which He 
died for us, was this mysterious death in His feeling, the “suffering of 
death’’, for He cried “finished” before He bowed His head and gave up 
the ghost. 

He bowed His soul to the inexorable “ wz/7”” in Gethsemane. “If this 
cup may not pass from Me except I drink it—Thy will be done”’. Deep in 
the moral order was the will that so it must be the “just for the unjust to 
bring us to God”’. 

But He was comforted in all the agony that was gathering upon His 
soul by this thought, to which He gives expression three times in the course 
of His ministry: “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men 
unto Myself”. The depth of insight which these words contain and which 
the event has proved, I may only suggest. The power of the cross in 
making men know themselves, melting them to contrition, speaking pardon 
to their convicted souls, honoring the righteousness which their own moral 
sense demands; satisfying the exactions of their consciences, making them 
more afraid of the love which forgives than of the wrath which threatens, 
bringing the Father-heart of the universe into a real sympathetic pulsing 
against our hearts, quickening new life, inspiring a passionate enthusiasm, 
glorifying the law of sacrifice as the way to life for all His followers—this 
is a theme which never grows old and which no eloquence can exhaust. 


** Did e’er such love and sorrow meet?” 
“Or thorns compose so rich a crown?” 


Ter 
I need only state in words as few as possible that the Christ was a/so to 
initiate a society in and through which His word and work should be perpetu- 
ated and witnessed for in the visible world down to the end of time. This 
purpose appears in His choice of the twelve recorded by the synoptists and 


342 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


assumed in the Gospel of John where they constantly appear. His sacer- 
dotal prayer shows God’s purpose in them: “As thou didst send Me into 
the world, even so sent I them into the world”. Through them the Gospel 
must be preached in all the nations. He would give them the two simple 
sacraments—the outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual 
grace—the initiatory baptism and the perpetual bond and sacrament of 
fellowship—the Lord’s Supper. The law of their service should be this: 
‘“* He that will be chief among you, let him be your servant”. 

Their unity, and, through their witness, the unity of all in all time who 
might “believe on Him through their word”, should be in their Spiritual 
Head. ‘I in them and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one, 
that the world may know that Thou didst send Me”. 

As we follow Him to the cross, shrinking so humanly, and yet in His 
sensitive nature so superhumanly too, we are brought to words which seem 
to disclose something of His consciousness during the dark hours of suffer- 
ing. “Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the 
Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, ‘I thirst’”’. At every step of His approach 
to the cross, as indeed from His boyhood, doubtless, the Scriptures to be 
fulfilled had been in His mind. “The law was in His heart”. He said to 
the disciples, you remember, at the Supper,—‘“‘ the Son of Man goeth as it is 
written of Him”. When they went out into the Mount of Olives again, He 
said: ‘ All ye shall be offended because of Me this night, for it is written, 
I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered 
abroad”’. When they came to take Him, He forbade resistance, and said: 
“Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My Father and He shall pres- 
ently give Me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the 
Scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be?” The dawning consciousness 
of the Boy in the Temple had grown to this, as the consummation on earth 
of the work His Father had given Him to do. 

In all that tragedy He was not posing to fulfil the Scriptures, but sus- 
tained by the confidence that in all His suffering the Scriptures were being 
fulfilled in Him. It was His meat to do the Father’s will, and that 
will was unrolled to Him in every experience even to the moment of 
darkest, deepest depression, when His heart was overwhelmed within Him; 
but He “could complain”, in words which were pressed out of His soul’s 
anguish: ‘‘ My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ When the 
burning thirst consumed Him, He would naturally think in the very words 
of another of those psalmist experiences which had always been as parts of 
Himself. He remembered that this was the last drop in the cup. He 
could express His last human need, and so He gasped, “I thirst”. They 
gave Him the vinegar to drink, and, with the physical strength revived for 
the moment, He cried with a loud voice,—“‘ Finished ”’. 

We cannot doubt that this consciousness which He would not stupify 
was in full vigor for that moment. The whole meaning of His past had been, 
we may suppose, in His thought during the long dark hours. 

He had counted off the history He had been making by the clock of 





THE CRUCIFIXION—‘IT IS FINISHED” 343 


time. He had spoken repeatedly of His times, His hours, His day. He had 
said in words best construed in their simplest meaning, ‘‘I must work the 
works of Him that sent Me while it is day, the night cometh when no man 
can work”. The night had come to Him and He was passing through it to 
the new morning of His glory. ; 

Finished therefore was His day’s work in the body. He had put Himself 
as the manifested God into human history, making a new day which 
Abraham rejoiced to see, and beginning a new creation in the ‘‘ Word” 
made flesh, and saying to the moral chaos of a world, ‘“ Let light be”’. 

Finished was the Jewish age. In another moment the veil of the Temple 
would be rent in twain. The scroll of law, psalm and prophecy would be 
closed and sealed with His blood. It was complete in Him even from the 
beginning, for the ‘“‘seed of the woman had bruised the serpent’s head”’. 

Finished was the manifestation in His person of God’s creative idea in 
humanity. It had been evolving from the beginning in and through all the 
Jewish history. He had caught the inspiration of the larger purpose, the 
poetry of all the past and made it a reality in Himself. He had revealed 
the new name “ Father” in a real human relation made perfect by suffering, 
achieved by faith, patience and courage. God was no longer to be remote 
in the mocking beauty or the awful inexorableness of nature. He had been 
brought near. ‘So loving the world that He gave His only begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting 
life”. 

Finished was the full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the 
whole world, in His perfect obedience even unto the death of the cross. 
Exacted in the eternal counsels of the divine righteousness, God was satis- 
fied in Him, and He had won the right in righteousness to bring men out 
of the bondage of the old condemning law into the freedom of the Spirit, 
even the “glorious liberty of children of God”’. 

finished was the founding of His church in the hearts of His chosen 
ones. ‘Other foundation could no man lay than that which was now laid” 
in humanity. All that should be erected upon it in the history of organized 
Christianity should be abiding only as it is built upon the “foundation of 
the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner 
stone”. St. Peter, distinguished by our Lord Himself as the confessor of 
a true faith, is entitled to tell us of our Lord’s mind, and he has done it in 
the words: ‘“‘ Unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but 
with God elect, precious, ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual 
house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to 
God through Jesus Christ. Because it is contained in Scripture,—‘ Behold, 
I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious, and He that believeth 
on Him shall not be put to shame’”’. 

All this was finished for us through the splendid faith of a perfect Son 
of Man, who, in all and through all His work embodies the essential princi- 
_ ple of the faith He requires of us as essential to salvation. ‘ Whosoever 
will save His life shall lose it, but whosoever will lose His life for My sake, 
the same shall save it”. 





* THE RESURRECTION THE CROWNING FACT OF CHRISTIANITY. 
tBY REV. HERBERT WELCH, D. D., 


PASTOR OF THE CHESTER HILL METHODIST Episcopal CHURCH, Mount 
VERNON, N. Y. 


It will be recalled that Harnack began his celebrated lectures on the 
nature of Christianity by telling his students how important it was “to 
remind mankind again and again that a man of the name of Jesus Christ 
once stood in their midst”’.+ May not we add that it is likewise immensely 
important to remind mankind again and again that one named Jesus Christ 
once died and rose again from the dead? For Strauss was not far wrong in 
thinking that the doctrine of the resurrection was “‘the centre of the centre, 
the real heart of Christianity”; at least this is true if the first Christians 
understood at all adequately the religion which they were set to preach. 
The two main topics of apostolic teaching were the death and the resur- 
rection of Jesus. ‘‘We preach Christ crucified’”’, was the declaration of 
Paul (1 Cor. 1: 23), but side by side with “the preaching of the cross” 
(1 Cor. 1: 18) was the preaching of the empty tomb. In the synagogue of 
Antioch in Pisidia (Acts 13: 30-34), in that at Thessalonica (Acts 17: 3), 
before the philosophers of Athens (Acts 17: 18-31), and before Festus and 
Agrippa at Caesarea (Acts 26: 23), to Jew and to Gentile, learned and igno- 
rant, high and low, Paul made known his faith in the resurrection of Jesus, 
and put that fact in the foreground of his preaching. 

In doing this, he was making no new Gospel. ‘I delivered unto you”, 
he writes to the Corinthians, ‘‘that which also I received, how that Christ 
died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried; 
and that He hath been raised on the third day, according to the Script- 
ures”? (1 Cor. 15: 3,4). Peter in the first Christian sermon ever preached, 
did not forget repeated emphasis on the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 2: 24-32) ; 
.and in Solomon’s Porch (Acts 3: 15), before the Jewish rulers (Acts 4: ro), 
and in the house of Cornelius (Acts 10: 40), he bore like testimony. He 
and Paul may fairly be taken as representing the drift of the public utter- 
ances of the apostles. ‘‘The Gospel of the kingdom”’, and ‘the word” 
which they proclaimed must have included a large and emphatic statement 
of these pivotal truths. The men who preached ‘“‘the Lord Jesus” (Acts 11: 
20) at Antioch with such remarkable results doubtless gave in their story 
as much prominence to the passion and the resurrection as the evangelists 
give. Indeed, when the apostles were assured that they were to be “wit- 
nesses ” of Christ to the ends of the earth (Acts 1: 8), they obviously under- 

* Delivered at the Eighth Conference, held at All Saints Memorial Church, May rr, 1904. 

t+ President-Elect of Ohio Wesleyan University. 


t What ts Christianity ? (Eng. trans.), p. 1. 
§ Quoted by Mair, Studies in the Christian Evtdences, p. 232. 


344 


THE RESURRECTION. 345 


stood that the chief fact (distinguishing fact from doctrine) to which they 
were to bear witness, was His resurrection from the dead (Acts 1: 22); and 
we are shortly told that ‘‘ with great power gave the apostles their witness 
of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 4: 33). 

The fact thus strongly and continually asserted occupied an eminent 
place in the minds of those who heard and believed. The recognition of 
the Lordship of Jesus, which Harnack calls one of the three characteristic 
features of the earliest Christian society, grew, as he says himself,* from the 
acceptation of the death and resurrection of Christ as fundamental facts. 
To quote his own words, ‘‘The primitive community called Jesus its Lord 
because He had sacrificed His life for it, and because its members were 
convinced that He had been raised from the dead and was then sitting on 
the right hand of God”’.t By reason of its place, then, in the apostolic 
preaching and in the primitive Christian faith, the resurrection may justly 
be called the crowning fact of Christianity. In the matter of the death of 
Jesus, the interpretation—the doctrine—is the vital thing; while with the 
resurrection, the question of the fact itself is crucial. 

But in the second place, the resurrection occupies its pre-eminent 
position in the Christian scheme, because as a fact it is most solidly attested. 
In the presentation of the evidence /oim does not greatly differ from the 
other Gospels. The purpose of them all, as some one has remarked, is not 
to give a history of the events of those eventful days, but to present proofs 
of a central fact. . Naturally, John, as Dr. Sanday puts it, “selects what had 
taken the most personal hold on him”.t His attention seems to be concen- 
trated on a few individuals. He speaks of Mary Magdalene as if she went 
alone to the sepulchre; he adds to Luke’s account of Peter’s visit the state- 
ment that he himself was also there; and he gives details of both these 
incidents which are elsewhere lacking. He tells the story of Thomas’ 
doubt and faith; he paints the picture of the seven by the Sea of Galilee, in 
which Peter and himself again are prominent. His characteristic thoughts 
and phrases appear, but his purpose is one with the other evangelists. 
John’s story is in harmony with the declared object of his whole Gospel 
(John 20: 31)—that of convincing his readers (1) of the historic truth of his 
statements, as in the case of Thomas, and (2) of their spiritual value—‘“‘ that 
believing, ye may have life in His name’’—as in the case of Peter. The his- 
toricity of the resurrection, then, 1s a thought which John shares and 
enforces with the rest. 

The prevalence of the belief has been already suggested. The Gospels 
and the Epistles alike are stamped with it. And that it was the universal 
conviction among the Christians of the second and the first generations is 
confirmed, not, to be sure, by the observance of an Easter day, for though 
it is quite possible that this began in the time of the apostles, it can not be 
traced back farther than the second century with any certainty; but the 

* Op. czt., p. 166. 

t Of. czt., p. 165. 


tArt. Fesus Christ in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 2, p. 640, Cf. Westcott, Introduction 
to the Study of the Gospels, pp. 327-333. 


346 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


inauguration of a weekly day of rejoicing on Sunday did take place at once, 
and can have no other explanation than the belief that on this day the Lord 
arose.” 

Strongest of all evidence, however, is the very existence of the Christian 
Church itself. The disappointed, timid and disheartened disciples of Good 
Friday were not material out of which to build a conquering church. Their 
sudden transition from sorrow to joy, from gloom to hope, from weakness to 
strength t can be explained only by some new faith which had been born in 
their hearts. What could have instilled into them such vigor and such 
confidence for their impossible task? Let Baur answer! ‘ Nothing but the 
miracle of the resurrection [by which he evidently means a belief in such 
a miracle] could dispel the doubts which threatened to drive away the faith 
of the disciples after its object into the eternal night of death * * * It 
was in this faith that Christianity acquired a firm basis for its historical 
development”’.t Gibbon’s five causes for the spread of Christianity are not 
enough.$ The ‘‘compact church organization” was good, but how did it 
come about that there was amy organization? The “pure morals” and the 
‘‘zeal of the early Christians ’’ were good, but whence did they emerge into 
life? The “power of miracles” and the “belief in future rewards and pun- 
ishments ’’—did they spring from a Christ who was dead, buried, lost? The 
apostles would have had no heart to preach a dead Christ and the world 
would never have received Him if they had. Without the transformation 
wrought by the belief in the resurrection of the Lord there would have been 
no preachers, no converts, no church. All admit today that the Christian 
Church was built upon a tomb believed to be empty—that the faith in the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ created Christianity. It was more thana clever 
retort which Talleyrand is reported to have made to the benevolent ration- 
alist who lamented to him the failure of his philanthropic propaganda. ‘‘ What 
was he to do?” he asked. And the witty ex-bishop “politely condoled with 
him, feared it was a difficult task to found a new religion, more difficult than 
could be imagined, so difficult that he hardly knew what to advise! ‘ Still’,— 
so he went on after a moment’s reflection,—‘ there is one plan which you 
might at least try: I should recommend you to be crucified, and to rise 
again the third day’ ’’.||_ It was in this way that the disciples believed Jesus 
Christ to have founded His religion, and it was this confidence which made 
them fearless, persistent and triumphant. 

This belief needs to be made clear, for let it be remembered that it is 
upon this belief of the early Christians that we later Christians are depend- 
ent” for our knowledge of the fact which underlies our faith. Harnack 
would have us hold “the Easter faith ’,—‘‘the conviction that the crucified 
one gained a victory over death; that He whois the first-born among many 





*Art. Lord’s Day in Hastings, of. cit., vol. 3, p. 140. 
t See e. g., Mair, of. cit., p. 245. 
) } Church History, Eng. trans., vol. 1, p. 42 (quoted by Stewart, Handbook of Christian Evidences, 
p- 50). 
§ Cf. Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 2, pp. 17-19. 
|| Matural Religion, p. 181 (quoted by Mair, of. c7t., p. 231). 
T Mair, of. czt., p. 233. 


THE RESURRECTION. 347 


brethren still lives”,—even though ‘‘the Easter message” of the empty 
tomb and the appearance of a transfigured Lord may be taken from us *. 
The great thing, he would say, is to know that Christ now lives—not to dis- 
cover that He had a physical resurrection in the garden of Joseph. Now, 
it is certainly true that the knowledge which particularly concerns us is not 
that of the disposition of the Lord’s body, but that of His continued life. 
But how are we to gain this knowledge? As Paul gained his, Harnack 
would seem to answer. His faith was based upon a personal revelation of 
the Son of God in him and to him. To rest our belief on anything less 
personal and direct than this, on the unstable foundation afforded by the 
stories of Paul and of the evangelists concerning the post-resurrection 
appearances of Christ, isto expose it to destruction at the hands of criticism. 
But, we ask once more, how are we to know that Christ is living, save 
through the medium of these very appearances? Our personal experience 
does not bring an original knowledge of that fact. However much this 
experience may at last cause the outward evidence to seem superfluous, 
“none the less”, as Dr. Mason of Cambridge urges in his suggestive little 
book, t ‘‘the first step to this blessed assurance [for the disciples] was that 
they had seen, or believed that others had seen, the appearances of the risen 
Lord”. And so it must be for us. Our faith, to be sane and sound, must 
be based upon no mere impression, but an established fact.t The vision 
of Paul, which caused him to declare at once that Jesus was the Son of 
God (Acts 9: 20), was of a quite exceptional character, never repeated there- 
after, as Harnack admits. And yet, even this vision might not have been 
so plain had the report of the empty grave not come to Paul’s previous 
knowledge, as Harnack himself will not deny. If our religion is to have 
both positiveness and reasonableness, the question becomes one of supreme 
importance—was the belief of the early Christians, which has come to us as 
the foundation of our own faith and experience, based on literal truth or on 
a delusion? 

If we go into the details of the Gospels to answer that question, we 
seem to be in the midst of confusion. Ten discrepancies in these narratives 
of the resurrection have been dwelt on since the day of Celsus, so Dean 
Farrar tells us.l| We read the four accounts, and find it hard to obtain an 
exact story. ow many women came to the tomb on that first Easter 
morning, one or two or three or more? In one party or two? At what 
hour precisely was the pious pilgrimage undertaken? Did the women 
behold one or two mysterious visitors, and within or without the tomb? 
Did Peter only, or Peter and John make the journey to the garden in answer 
to their summons? Was the first appearance of the risen Christ to Peter, 
or to Mary Magdalene, or toa group of women? Were the later appear- 


* Of. ctt., pp. 173, 174. 

t Christiantty—What Is It ? p. 98. 

tCf. Dr. R. W, Dale, The Living Christ and the Four Gospels. 
§ Of. cit., p. 174. 

\| The Life of Christ, vol, 2, p. 432. 


348 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


ances chiefly in Galilee or around Jerusalem?* Was the resurrection body a 
material body, as the eating and drinking would suggest, or a spiritual body? 
In no part are the Gospel records so variant as here in the story of the 
resurrection. Some of the difficulties can be reconciled by a fair and judi- 
cious study ; possibly all could be accounted for by a fuller knowledge than 
is afforded us. But granting that some may remain, what facts are estab- 
lished by the testimony of these independent witnesses, who are not solici- 
tous to display an exact harmony in minor details, so confident are they that 
they follow no cunningly devised fables? Why, obviously, the great facts, 
the essential facts—the third day,t the early hour, the women’s visit, the 
lack of expectation in the minds of them or of the apostles, the empty tomb, 
the repeated appearances (nine or ten in all) of the Master Himself, the 
slow yielding to unquestionable evidence by those who at first disbelieved. 
To these momentous facts we have a united witness. How, then, otherwise 
than on the basis of truth, can these recorded experiences be explained ? 
All who deny the fact of the resurrection—if they are to be reckoned 
serious students at all—hold to one of four theories: trance, legend, vision, 
or telegram.t (1) The trance theory, maintaining that Jesus did not really 
die, was killed by Strauss in an incisive passage, and need not be further 
referred to. (2) The legend theory, which claims that the belief in the resur- 
rection was a later growth—the result of certain vivid and picturesque state- 
ments of the apostles’ faith that Jesus was surely alive—is too evidently in 
contradiction to the records and the facts to need consideration. (3) The 
vision theory, which has found many adherents, was fathered by Renan, 
who made Mary Magdalene the giver to the world of a risen God, and by 
Strauss, who argued from the visionary character of Paul’s sight of Jesus on 
the Damascus Road that the other post-resurrection appearances of Jesus 
were of the same sort, subjective and unreal. The objections to this theory 
of hallucination are briefly: (qa) that there was not the greparation for such 
visions, the lapse of time or the state of expectancy which would make such 
visions natural; (4) that there was not the duration or form which would 
characterize such visions, the appearances being confined within six weeks, 
being few in number, indoors and out, to groups and even crowds of men, 
and, to a degree, as Keim has remarked, cool and unfamiliar; and (c) that 
there was not the ¢ermnation which would naturally come to such visions, 
bringing on a reaction, leaving the subjects dull and apathetic, but that 
these limited, clear and tested appearances left the disciples resolute, pur- 
poseful, active. (4) The telegram theory, as Bruce has termed Keim’s 
proposed solution, would make these visions still unreal, but objective—a 
kind of picture message from heaven to assure the disciples of their Lord’s 
continued life and love. But this theory, while involving supernatural 


* Sanday, of. cit., p. 640. 

t Cf. Acts 10: 40; x Cor. 15 : 4. 

tOn the general subject of these theories, see Mair, of. c7t., pp. 249-253 ; Stewart, of. czt., pp. 53-55 + 
Sanday, of. c#t., p.641 ; Gilbert, The Student's Life of Fesus, pp. 401, 402; Edersheim, 7he Life and Times 
of Fesus, the Messiah, vol. 2, pp. 625-629; Bruce, Afologetics, pp. 385-398; Barrows, The Gospels Are 
True Histories, pp. 103-146. 


THE RESURRECTION. 349 


action as fully as the resurrection itself, labors under the great disadvantage 
of tampering with the Gospel narratives, and, in addition, of making the 
divine sender of these messages responsible for a sure misunderstanding on 
the part of the disciples and the consequent propagation of a false notion. 

On the ,other hand, if the natural explanation of the early Christian 
faith be accepted, if Jesus in very truth did rise from the dead, how easily all 
things fit together!* The character of Jesus, holy and unique, encourages 
us to believe of Him what we would not believe of others.t ‘It was 
not possible that He should be holden of death” (Acts 2:24). The proph- 
ecies of Jesus Himself, contained, as they are, not only in the triple 
tradition of the synoptists,+ but in isolated passages$ and in the fourth 
Gospel as well (John 2: 19-21), help us to believe the angelic word, ‘“‘ He is 
risen, even as He said” (Matt. 28:6). The testimony of the astounded 
guards, the sober character of the discrepant records, with their unconscious 
witness to the excitement and confusion of the time;|!i the belief of the 
disciples, after tests by eye and ear and hand as to the reality of the bodily 
presence of their Master—these unite to make plain that we are dealing 
with fact, not fiction. The adaptation of the Gospel of arisen Christ to 
humanity makes for the truth of the teaching, and the broad conviction that, 
whatever incidental errors might find their way into believers’ minds,? the 
God of truth would not allow the religion of Jesus Christ to be founded on 
a delusion. Despite all the unwillingness to accept a miracle that may mark 
this age of science, we may heartily agree with a scientist like Prof. W. N. 
Rice in his conclusion: ‘‘ When we consider that, but for the faith in the 
resurrection, Christianity would have been buried forever in the rock-hewn 
tomb in which the Master lay, and when we try to measure what Christianity, 
with its revelation of divine fatherhood and human brotherhood, and 
redemption from sin and life immortal, has been to mankind in these cen- 
turies of Christendom and Christian civilization, and what it promises to be 
in the glory of a millennial future, we cannot deem it ‘a thing incredible’ 
that, in that transcendent crisis of man’s moral history, ‘God should raise 
the dead’’’.> 

Yes, the interests to be served were vast. The resurrection is the 
crowning fact of Christianity not only because of its place in apostolic 
preaching and primitive Christian faith, not only because of the solidity of 
its evidence, but because of its relations to the doctrine and continued life 
of the church.¢ Four such relations may be specified as illustrate the out- 
come of the resurrection : 


* Mair, of. czt., pp. 234-249. 
+ Barrows, of. czt., pp. 64-67; Rice, Christian Faith inan Age of Science, pp. 357-359: 
} Matt. 20: 19 with Mark xo: 34, and Luke 18: 33; Matt. 16:2: with Mark 8: 31 and Luke 9:22. 
§ Matt. 12: 40; 27: 63; Matt. 17: 9 with Mark 9: 9; Matt. 17: 23 with Mark g: 31; Matt. 26: 32 with 
Mark 14: 28. 
*|| Stewart, of. cz#., p. 52. 
aSee e. g., McGiffert, The Apostolic Age, pp. 36-44. 
b OP. cit., p. 360. 
c Cf. Sanday, of. czt., p. 642. The results of a loss of belief in the resurrection are depicted in strong, 
but hardly too lurid, colors by Mr, Guy Thorne in his recent novel, ‘‘ When It Was Dark”. 





350 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


(1) The relation of the resurrection to the miraculous. If this one 
miracle is once firmly established, the @ priori improbability, of which 
Hume made so much, may be considered fairly met and mastered; the way 
is open for an impartial consideration of all alleged miracles on their indi- 
vidual evidence: Professor Rice, in the able and stimulating volume 
already quoted, goes so far as to say that “our chief reason for believing 
in any other miracle as historic, is that the strong evidence for the resur- 
rection suffices to establish a probability that miracle is a part of the 
divine plan of revelation ”’;* and I believe he is right. Nay, more, it sug- 
gests in a wider way that the observed and experienced order of nature is 
not so limited by our knowledge of it, or so fixed and invariable by some 
eternal decree concerning it, that nothing unprecedented can be expected 
or believed. It makes one humble and teachable to remember that he has 
to do with the God who raised Jesus from the dead. Harnack may believe 
in an “inviolable” order of nature, and may insist that the feeling of free- 
dom in God’s world which the religious man enjoys—the certainty ‘that he 
is not shut up within a blind and brutal course of nature”, but that he 
deals with a power who sometimes (as we see it) breaks through or arrests 
that order—that this feeling is but a fancy or a metaphor;? but if he 
accepted the resurrection as literal truth, he could strike out the word 
“inviolable”’. Historically, God has manifested Himself for special ends 
in miraculous works wrought through human hands; in present experience, 
God does manifest Himself in ways that are startling and incomprehensible 
to the little thoughts of the finite. Christianity is something more than the 
feeble human attempt to obey the teachings and to imitate the spirit of 
Jesus of Nazareth. If it means anything, it means “God with us”. A 
Christianity with no surprises, no incredibilities, is a Christianity with no 
power. But the resurrection of Jesus Christ opens the door to faith in the 
supernatural in human affairs. Spiritual experiences are real, Providence 
and prayer are real, temporalities as well as spiritualities are in the hands 
of a Father, unto whom “in everything’ our requests may be made known. 
The ‘“‘order of nature” is His servant, not His master, and the universe 

‘shall be moulded to meet His children’s need. 

(2) Look, again, at the relation of the resurrection to the teaching of 
Jesus. It is asserted by many today that the only test of religion is experi- 
ence—that a truth must become to us truth as it shines in its own inherent 
light, that it must commend itself in the fashion of an axiom, so as to be 
recognized when seen. By none has this teaching been more strongly and 
persuasively set forth than by the late Auguste Sabatier, in his monumental 
work, ‘‘ Religions of Authority”, only recently translated into English. He 
will have nothing of a religion based on external authority, authenticated by 
miracle and the like. The appeal must be the direct appeal of the Spirit of 
God to the spirit of man. Jesus, be says, brought in no new religious ideas. 
His one secret was in His consciousness of Sonship in the Father, and His 


* OP. ctt., p. 352. 
t Op. cit., pp. 29-30. 


THE RESURRECTION. 351 


one work was to communicate this consciousness to His followers. The 
historical element, as concerns both the works and the words of Jesus, is 
depreciated, as it was earlier by, for example, Professor T. H. Green, of 
Oxford. The ideas of God and man and their relations which we Christians 
have, are, so this school contends, “ self-evidencing and eternal, and possess 
an inherent truth and vitality entirely independent of the accidental vehicle 
through which they were introduced into the consciousness of mankind ”’. 
Such teachers, we gladly admit, have a spiritual message which is whole- 
some for our age, even in its defects; but such teachers, we must urge, do 
not know men as Jesus Christ knew them. He also laid stress upon the 
direct appeal to the human heart—“ Believe me”’, He cries, ‘that I am in 
the Father, and the Father in Me”’—as if He would ask, ‘‘ Can you not see 
it? Do you not feel it to be so?” And yet He recognized that men could 
not all and everywhere and always rise by pure hearts and clear eyes to see 
the truth immediately as it was in Him. And He adds a second reason— 
** Or else believe Me for the very works’ sake” (John 14:11). He does not 
disdain the testimony of external signs and witnesses. To the multitude of 
the ignorant and the sinful the pure message needs to be authenticated by 
the works—stamped with the authority of the Teacher sent from God. 
And many profess, with Nicodemus, “‘ We know that Thou art a teacher 
come from God: for no man can do these signs that Thou doest, except 
God be with him” (John 3:2). The miraculous accompaniments of 
the life of Jesus may prepare the way for His message, and then add 
impressiveness to it. This has been well put by Professor Rice, whose 
words I must once more quote: ‘‘ The evidence of miracle is still valid and 
still needed. We stand in an upper room in Jerusalem, and listen to the 
words with which the young Prophet of Galilee comforted His disciples on 
the last night of His life: ‘Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in 
God, believe alsoin Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions: if it 
were not so, I would have told you. I goto prepare a place for you. And 
if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto 
Myself; that where I am there ye may be also’. Beautiful words, in their 
sweet simplicity, and in their accord with our highest moral sentiment, our 
holiest aspirations. Words so beautiful ought to be true. But are they the 
words of one who speaks with authority and whose word can be trusted, or 
are they only the sweet dreams of a spirit too pure and gentle for this hard, 
rough world? To us, as to those disciples who heard Him, the evidence of 
the authority of His teaching is found in the fact of His resurrection ’”’.* 

(3) Consider, also, the relation of the resurrection to the question of 
the person of Jesus Christ. Whether the secret of that personality be con- 
ceived as residing in the filial consciousness of Jesus, or in His metaphysi- 
cal relation to the Father, the full declaration of the personality awaited this 
supreme event in His history. He was “declared to be the Son of God by 
the resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4). The intimations of His Mes- 
siahship had been repeatedly given, and statements had been made bearing 


* Op. cit., p. 384. 


352 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


upon the deeper mysteries of His nature. But the truth did not yet become 
plain to His disciples. ‘The conviction was gradually formed”, writes 
Dr. Mason,* “until at last, after the resurrection, the disciple who had, 
perhaps, been slowest to believe the Easter tidings, because he felt more 
than others the stupendous nature of the Easter belief which he instinctively 
felt must lie behind it, gave expression to that which was thenceforth the 
belief of Christendom. ‘My Lord’, he said—as he had doubtless said 
many times before—recognizing the identity of the risen Jesus; and then he 
sprang to the height of that confession which human lips had never as yet 
uttered, although every disciple’s heart had silently been ripening to utter 
it—the confession that his Lord was his God”. It was only the risen Lord 
whom the disciples knew as divine. It was Christ with the majesty of the 
opened tomb upon Him who commanded the reverential awe of the apos- 
tles, so that He who for three years had been the object of love now became 
also the object of worship. It was after the resurrection and because of 
the resurrection that, to borrow Dr. Sanday’s words, not here and there, 
one and another, ‘‘ but the whole Christian Church passed over at once to 
the fixed belief that He was God”. 

(4) Finally, let not the relation of the resurrection to the saving work, 
of Jesus be forgotten. Without the death of Jesus there is no Gospel; with- 
out His resurrection there is no assurance of the Gospel’s truth. The resur- 
rection put the seal on the work of Jesus, as well as on His person. His 
death and resurrection were both “according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 
15:7), that is, they had a divine meaning, a setting in a long providential 
order.t They completed and authenticated the plan of redemption. The 
work of Jesus was now not only humanly finished, but divinely accepted. 
The ‘“‘ martyr’”’ became evidently a Saviour. 

The question of the victory of goodness was settled once for all. Jesus 
had bidden the disciples “‘ be of good cheer’’, for He had ‘‘overcome the 
world”’ (John 16:33). But hard upon the words followed the awful death, 
the seeming failure and defeat. Sadly they confessed to a hope for God’s 
kingdom which had died and been buried with their Master (Luke 24:21). 
Utter purity had seemed to be helpless in a world of sin, and righteous- 
ness, in its one supreme manifestation, to be impotent. But then comes a 
change.~ Jesus Christ is to be “placarded before the eyes” of men (Gal. 
3:1), not simply as the crucified, not as the dead leader of a lost cause, but 
as a living king under whose feet one more enemy—the last and greatest— 
has been trampled (1 Cor. 15:26; 2 Tim. 1:10). His crucifixion has seemed 
to be a token of weakness; His living again is a token of God’s might (2 
Cor. 13:4). There is a power behind and in His resurrection (Phil. 3: 10), 
a “mighty power” shown in that working ‘‘ which God wrought in Christ 
when He raised Him from the dead” (Eph. 1:20)—a power sufficient to 
every need of the great enterprise which is now begun. “All power is 
given unto Me”’, cries the risen Lord, ‘‘ go ye, therefore’’ (Matt. 28: 18, 19). 


* Of. cit., p. 106. 
t Mason, of. cit., p. 84. 


THE RESURRECTION. 353 


Nothing is now too good to be believed, nothing too great to be attempted. 
Righteousness is vindicated as the mastering force of the universe. The ' 
death of Jesus is seen to be only an example under the general rule of 
“dying to live”. Obstacles can be despised, enemies loved, death itself 
faced without terror, for Jesus Christ has confronted and conquered all. 
To the disheartened soldier comes the glad tidings that his captain has not 
quit the field. In the exultant words of another, “All the wealth of His 
deep interest, His spacious human sympathy, His rich tenderness of dis- 
position, His inspiring hopefulness, His invincible energy, and the strength 
of His redemptive purpose, have been untouched by the desolating hand of 
death. There they are just behind the veil, which half conceals and half 
reveals them. The world’s greatest asset is still valid. The one Spirit 
whom failure could not daunt nor despondency enervate is still there. The 
one Being whose beauty could subdue the worst, whose love could melt the 
hardest into contrite penitence, and who held the key to every man’s heart, 
is alive, interested, active, sympathetic. That surely is the spring of our 
largest hope, the root of our assured confidence, the ground of our invinci- 
ble optimism”. He was “declared to be the Son of God with power by 
the resurrection from the dead’”’ (Rom. 1:4). 

But this power of God, exerted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is to 
be the pledge not only of the victory of the kingdom, but of the transforma- 
tion of the individual believer. The kingdom is to spread within as well as 
without. Jesus “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for 
our justification’? (Rom. 4:25). So close is the truth of the resurrection to 
the spiritual life that he who accepts with his heart the resurrection of Jesus 
(with all that that implies of Saviourhood and Lordship) shall be saved 
(Rom. 10:9; Col. 2:12). The resurrection of Jesus was more than a figure 
of the rising from the death of sin to the life of righteousness; it was also a 
means to this resurrection of the believer by his mystical union with the 
risen Christ (Rom. 6:4-10). It was a Gospel of the death and resurrection 
of Jesus by which the Corinthians were saved (1 Cor. 15: 1-4), and it will be 
such a Gospel that will in every age have power enough to transform lives, 
and vitality enough to transmit itself to a generation yet tocome. ‘The 
God of Peace ”’ it is, “that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus”, 
who will “make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in 
you that which is well-pleasing in His sight”? (Heb. 13:20, 21). 

The resurrection of Jesus, moreover, is a pledge of the completion of 
His work of grace by the coronation of the spiritual life with the final 
gift of immortality. Jesus is but “the first-fruits of them that slept” 
(1 Cor. 15:20). ‘‘ Because I live, ye shall live also” is His message to His 
own.* The thought of the future was purified and elevated above the 
material plane by the exhibition of that resurrection body with its strange 
pneumatic qualities, and the obvious suggestion that the resurrection life 
was no return to former condition, as the Jews had naturally thought, but the 

. beginning of a new and glorified life.t But more than this, the resurrection 


* Cf. 1. Thess. 4:14; 1 Cor. 6:14; 2 Cor. 4:14. 
* Mason, of. czt., pp. 95-98. Gilbert, of. cz#., pp. 400 ff. 


, 
ae 


354 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


of Jesus has given to the world its clearest assurance of any life beyond the 
grave. The Gospel through which “life and immortality were brought to 
light’? (2 Tim. 1:10) was the Gospel of the empty grave. Even Harnack 
says, in words that glow with feeling: ‘‘ Whatever may have happened at 
the grave, and in the matter of the appearances, one thing is certain: Zhis 
grave was the birthplace of the indestructible belief that death is vanquished 
and there is a life eternal. It is useless to cite Plato; it is useless to point to 
the Persian religion, and the ideas and literature of later Judaism. All that 
would have perished, and has perished, but the certainty of the resurrection 
and of a life eternal which is bound up with the grave in Joseph’s garden 
has not perished, and on the conviction that /esus lives we still base the 
hopes of citizenship in an eternal city which make our earthly life worth 
living and tolerable”.* In the confidence that He has gone to prepare a 
place, we may still repeat the unwavering words of Browning: 


“O Saul, it shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me 
Thou shalt love and be loved by forever; a Hand like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!” + 


The Christianity that in history has proved a conquering power lies not 
merely in the things which Jesus said, as Harnack would have us believe ; 
not merely in the things which Jesus felt as a Son of God, as Sabatier would 
teach us; but in what He said and felt and was and did; and these all find 
their climax and their crown in His resurrection from the dead. “ Blessed 
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which, according to His 
abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus Christ from the dead ”’ (1 Pet. 1:3). 


“ One thing 
Remained, however,—one that tasked 
My soul to answer; and I asked 
Fairly and frankly, what might be 
That History, that Faith, to me?” i 


“In the biography of Dr. Dale there is the record of an experience 
which is one of the great things in our modern Christian life. He was 
writing an Easter sermon, and when half way through the thought of the 
risen Lord broke in upon him as it had never done before. ‘Christ is 
alive’, I said to myself; ‘alive’, and then I paused; ‘alive’, and then I 
paused again; ‘alive! Can that really be true? Living as really as I 
myself am?’ I got up and walked about, repeating, ‘ Christ is living, Christ 
is living!’ At first it seemed strange and hardly true, but at last it came 
upon me as a burst of sudden glory; yes, Christ is living. It was tomea 
new discovery. [ thought that all along I had believed it, but not until that 
moment did I feel sure about it. I then said, ‘My people shall know it; I 
shall preach about it again and again, until they believe it as I do now’”. 


* Of. ctt., p. 175. 
tjSaul, 18. 
t Browning, Christmas Eve and Easter Day, 4. 


THE RESURRECTION. 355 


The need of the hour is to make the resurrection not simply a historical 
fact, accepted by the intellect as proved, but a real truth in the heart and * 
conscience, manifested in a life surrendered to the dominion of a risen 
Lord and spent in the fellowship of a living Friend. 


* THE TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER OF THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO 
ST. JOHN. 


BY REV. HENRY G. WESTON, D. D., 


PRESIDENT OF CROZER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, CHESTER, PENN. 


There has been some difference of opinion among learned men as to 
the writer of this chapter, the time of its composition and its relation to the 
preceding portion of the Gospel. A study of the chapter will show that it 
constitutes an organic part of the Gospel, that it is the appropriate epilogue 
demanded by the prologue, if these terms may be used, and that it has all 
the peculiar characteristics of the Gospel. The external evidence against it 
is weak, and the internal evidence decisive in its favor. 

The Gospel of John is the Gospel of the manifestation of Christ. This 
chapter contains an account of His final manifestation to His disciples. It 
is the third manifestation (not appearance) after His resurrection. It differs 
from the two preceding, first, in that it is not made to the assembled disci- 
ples, but to a select number—seven; second, that it is a manifestation by a 
miracle. The miracles in this Gospel differ in several respects from those 
recorded by the Synoptists. They are much fewer in number, only eight; 
_ with the single exception of the court officer’s child, they are self moved, 
not demanding faith on the part of the recipient, nor wrought primarily for 
the recipient’s benefit. There is no prohibition of publicity ; on the contrary, 
they are signs, and as such, are wrought for the express purpose of being 
known. As the Gospel of John is the Gospel of the future, the miracles are 
all promises and prophecies. They are manifestations of His glory, of the 
glory that is to be revealed, of which His church is to be partaker (1 Peter 
5:1, 4, Io). 

The miracle with which this chapter opens is a manifestation of the 
glory that shall be revealed. Compare it with a similar miracle wrought at 
the beginning of the church’s work. You will find the account in the fifth 
chapter of the Gospel according to Luke. It is the prophecy of the work of 
the church during this age. Christ is in the boat; a great number of all 
kinds of fishes are caught; the products of the cast are taken into the boat, 
which begins to sink; the church is imperiled by its very success. These 
fishes are good and bad; the separation awaits the time when the angels 
shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just. In the miracle 
we are studying, the Lord is on the shore; the fishes are drawn, not into the 
boat, but to the land; they are not an unknown multitude, of unknown 
quality, good and bad; they are all great fishes the exact number of which 
is known, a hundred and fifty and three. It is the manifestation of the 


* Delivered at the Seventh Conference, held at the Central Congregational Church, April 13, 1904. 


356 


THE TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER. 357 


glory of that morning when the night shall have been spent and the long 
looked-for day has come; when Christ appears to consummate salvation; 
when the church, holy and without blemish, without spot or wrinkle or any 
such thing, takes her place as Christ’s bride. At the marriage feast, there 
is manifested that peculiar characteristic of the work of salvation, the blessed 
union of the human and divine, the joint results of those who have been 
workers together with God and of Him who has been working in them of 
His good pleasure. ‘As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a 
fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon and bread, and the Lord said to 
them, bring of the fish which ye have now caught”. So may God grant 
that He speak to us. 

But if He is so to speak to His church, there must be time for the 
church both to make herself ready for the marriage supper of the Lamb, and 
time to provide for that portion of the feast which she is to furnish. The 
marriage feast was not possible on the day of Pentecost; it could not come 
in the first century; the delay of our Lord’s coming, as Peter tells us, is for 
salvation (2 Peter 3:15). There must be long years of faith and hope and 
prayer and work during which the church must fit itself and be fitted for its 
high estate, and its members be gathered in from the ranks of the world: 
This long time is a season, not of idle expectation, gazing up into heaven, 
but of work and warfare and suffering for Christ, of laying hold of that for 
which the church was laid hold of by Jesus Christ, a time in which every 
building, fitly framed together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, 
all Christians being builded together into a habitation of God through the 
Spirit. 

To this end Christ sanctifies Himself. He continually works in His 
people by the washing of regeneration and by their daily renewal by the Holy 
Spirit. The end at which He is aiming can not be attained without the 
constant co-operation of the church itself. This principle holds in every 
form of human attainment. No money, care, or effort can educate a boy 
without the boy’s own earnest endeavor. To the church Christ gives the 
commission with which the Gospel according to John closes, just as the first 
Gospel closes with the other great commission to disciple all the nations. 
But, you say, Christ is here addressing Peter. Yes, but not to Peter as an 
individual were the three directions which we are about to study given any 
more than the commission in Matthew is given tothe eleven. The apostles 
did not go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature; on 
the contrary, when the first persecution broke out against the church in 
Jerusalem, all were dispersed, except the apostles. 

A careful perusal of the Gospels will show you that wherever Christ 
segregates the apostles, or a portion of them, and gives them instruction, 
He always addresses them as the prospective church, and the directions He 
gives cover the whole dispensation. The threefold trust committed to Peter 
when they had breakfasted is no more committed to him as an individual 
than were the keys of the kingdom as related in the sixteenth chapter of 
Matthew. The keys of the kingdom were committed to the church which 


358 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


still holds them; no man enters the kingdom except through the instrumen- 
tality of the church. Peter was chosen by Christ to be the representative 
and mouth-piece of the twelve apostles who stood before him as the pro- 
spective church. 

In the words addressed by Christ to Peter as the representative of the 
church there are a threefold question, a threefold answer, and a consequent 
threefold charge. 

Why is this question asked, and why is it asked three times? 

Because the one fundamental, essential, indispensable qualification for 
those to whom the church is to be intrusted is love to Christ. The charge 
is the committal of love, by love, to love. 

The first question differs from the other two. ‘Simon, son of John, 
lovest thou Me more than these?”’ Scholars tell us that “so far as grammar 
goes ”’, this may mean either ‘‘ Lovest thou Me more than the other disciples 
love Me?” or, ‘“‘Lovest thou Me more than all thy earthly possessions, all thy 
earthly loves?” Grammar may not decide, but something higher than 
grammar does. Can any father imagine himself asking his child, “ Do you 
love me more than your brothers and sisters do?’’ Would any father, if 
such a question were put, desire a child to say ‘“‘yes”? Isa candidate for 

the ministry ever asked whether he loves Christ more than his brethren in 
the ministry do? If he were to answer in the affirmative, he would surely 
show his unfitness for the office to which he aspires. No, the question of 
Christ is, “Do you love Me so much that you will forsake all and follow 
Me”? This question Peter could answer with all his heart, “‘ Yea, Lord, 
Thou knowest that I love Thee”. 

Three times is this question repeated. I am sorry to say that nearly all 
the commentators whom I have consulted agree that Christ intends in this 
way to remind Peter of his threefold denial. It is presumption in me to 
differ with such a body of learned men, yet I confess that I can not adopt 
their opinion. I can not believe that this question, never a proper one 
except from the lips of love, was repeated three times by Christ in order to 
mortify and humiliate Peter by reminding him of the one awful sin of his 
life. It seems to me inconsistent with the nature of Christ, with the methods 
of God, and with all the dealings of Christ with Peter before and after his 
denial. 

And I ask you, do you believe it? If you had been in Christ’s place at 
this time, if you had a friend to whom you were about to entrust those whom 
you loved more than life; if this friend under the pressure of temptation in 
the darkest hour the world ever saw, an hour which above all others was the 
hour and power of darkness, had denied that he knew you, if your one 
prayer for that friend in view of that hour had been that his faith in you 
might not fail, and that prayer had been answered, so that one look from 
you had broken his heart and he had hastened to your side, would you, in 
the presence of his and your friends as you were about to confer on him 
the greatest possible mark of your love and confidence, would you remind 
him of his fault? You would not allow him to allude to it. You would 


THE TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER. 359 


despise yourself if at such a time you would thus humiliate him. All that to 
you is as though it had never been. 

Beloved, do you know how God forgives? 

Some time ago, I had a grandchild spending a year in my family. One 
day, little Grace came to the daughter who had the special oversight of her, 
with a request for some favor. ‘“ No” was the reply, ‘‘you have been a 
naughty girl and you can not have it”’. 

She came to her the next week and said, ‘“‘ Aunt, I have been a good 
girl now. May I not do that?” 

“Yes, you may, but you were not a good girl last week”’. 

“‘Qh, aunt Dora, you are not a bit like God. When God forgives any 
one, He does not keep flinging it up to him afterwards”. Out of the 
mouths of babes and sucklings God ordains praise. 

Oh, beloved, do you know how God forgives? Hear Him: “I have 
blotted out asa thick cloud thy transgressions”. You have seen a dark 
cloud on the face of the sky with its clearly defined outlines ; you turn away, 
think of something else, look back again and the cloud has disappeared. 
There is no scar on the fair face of the heavens; no man can ever tell where 
it has been or trace its outline; it has vanished. You have stood on the 
deck of a steamer and cast something into the ocean. The waters close 
over it. It has left no seam on the bosom of the waters; no eye will ever 
again see it. Listen, ‘“‘Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the 
sea”. You have read that wonderful prayer recorded in the fifty-first Psalm: 
‘“Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow”. I have ridden through the 
forest on a bright winter morning after a snowstorm, and as I admired the 
beauty of the snow glittering in the sunlight, I have said, ‘‘ Snow, thou art 
dazzlingly white, but I know something whiter ; my soul washed in the blood 
of Jesus”. 

Are you still unconvinced? Look at the way in which our Lord dealt 
with Peter before and after his denial. At the last supper, Christ says, 
‘“‘Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to have you that he may sift you as 
wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith failnot”. Mark the “you” 
and the “thee’’; mark also, that He does not pray that Peter may be kept 
from the commission of the sin, but that after the sin his faith may not fail. 
What place that sin had in the great work wrought on Calvary we can only 
conjecture. At any rate, the question which God asks the sinner is not, 
“What have you done?” but, ‘“‘ What will younowdo?” The decisive question 
with each one of us will be, not “ Did you sin?” but, ‘‘ What did you do after 
you sinned?”’ Those of us who have had experience in dealings with our 
brethren who look back on a life spent in the professed service of God with 
such bitter condemnation as is sometimes felt, know what it is to pray and 
exhort “that thy faith fail not”. This made the difference between Peter 
and Judas. Both had fearfully sinned. Bothrepented. The repentance of 
Judas, tried by the best human standards was unexceptionable. He con- 
fessed to his partners in sin the awful crime he had committed. He would 
not retain the wages of his wrong doing, but flung the pieces of silver down 


360 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


on the pavement. He had no faith that God would forgive him and so he 
could not forgive himself. You know the result. 

How does Christ treat Peter before and after his denial? In Matthew, 
as we have seen, He prays that his faith may not fail. In Mark, Christ’s first 
message to His disciples is, “Go tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth 
before you to Galilee’; in Luke, “‘The Lord has risen indeed and has 
appeared unto Simon”. Paul tells us that ‘‘ He appeared to Cephas, then 
to the twelve”’. 

It is very strange when one sees how Christ dealt with Peter, what 
special affection He lavished upon him, with what great interests He 
entrusted him, that public speakers so often seem incapable of pronouncing 
his name without prefixing some opprobrious epithet. He is characterized 
as ‘‘impetuous Peter”, “fickle Peter’, and I know not what. Why not, 
once ina while, follow the example of Him who said, ‘“‘ Blessed art thou, 
Simon Barjona; flesh and blood hath not revealed this to thee, but My 
Father, who is in heaven”. I wish I could once hear from the pulpit, 
“Blessed Peter”’. 

The reply of Peter to the inquiry of Christ is the best possible ; ‘“‘ Lord, 
Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee”. Christ’s reply 
is His first charge to Peter, “Feed My lambs”. What words could be more 
welcome to Peter's ears. Love’s one wish is to be asked to do something 
for the person loved. What words could be sweeter than those which Christ 
here speaks? It would be difficult to imagine another sentence of the same 
length that would convey more of the heart of Christ, of His feeling toward 
Peter, of the place which those for whom He is providing hold in His 
affections, ‘‘My lambs”. I commend these words as themes of meditation 
to those of you whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditate in 
that law day and night. 

The word “feed” in this charge is by no means to be restricted to 
- instruction. That the young Christian needs instruction goes without saying. 
But the food which a child eats may be of the best, and yet the child become 
_a source of grief and shame. The moral atmosphere which he breathes, the 
influences which surround him, the example which is continually before him, 
these are the things which determine whether he is to break his parents’ 
heart or be a comfort, an honor and a blessing. Character is determined 
by the family nurture andtraining. Wherever there is a Samuel ministering 
before the Lord, there is always a Hannah. Even our Lord Himself, if He 
is to come into the world as a child can not come until there has been time 
to produce a father, a righteous man, and above all, a mother, blessed of 
the Lord, who could sing to Him those songs which have been the canticles 
of the church in all ages. The character of the church in which the young 
Christian is nurtured determines his character and destiny. If he receive 
the right influence, example, instruction, he will be, in his sphere, what the 
church is, the light of the world. 

It is very important to remember that Peter is not addressed here as an 
individual, not as a minister, but as the representative of the church. This 


THE TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER. 361 


direction of our Lord, “‘ Feed My lambs”, is given to the church; to all in 
her who in their various relations and with their various gifts and graces 
have to do with shaping in any way the character and conduct of the young 
members. These words are as binding on parents, Sunday school teachers, 
experienced and influential members of the church, on all who can be of 
service to the young Christian. 

“He saith to him the second time, Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me? 
He saith to Him, yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith to 
him, Shepherd My sheep”. 

The verb and the noun are both changed. Lambs have become sheep, 
the persons for whom Christ is making provision are no longer children 
under the constant care of those who love them and watch over them; they 
are out in the world, bearing the burden and heat of the day, contending 
against wickedness in the church and the world, exposed to all the influences 
which Satan can bring to bear upon them, breathing the atmosphere of a 
world at enmity with God, walking necessarily in its soiling paths, needing 
—Oh, how much !—shepherding. In this Gospel of John you will notice that 
the favorite terms which Christ uses to express the relation between Him- 
self and His church are ‘‘shepherd”’ and ‘‘sheep”. Why isthis? A sheep 
is notoriously the most irrational, if I may be pardoned for the word, the 
“dumbest” of animals. All other animals may be trained; I have heard 
even of trained fleas, but who ever heard of a trained sheep? Ifa sheep 
wander from the fold, which it is certain to do if left to itself, it does not 
know enough to return; unless the shepherd seek it, it will perish; it has no 
means of defence; it is the most helpless, as it is the most foolish of 
animals. The only thing that can be said of it, and, blessed be God, the 
only thing that need be said of it to make it very dear to the heart of Christ 
is, ‘They hear the shepherd’s voice and they follow him”’. 

The office of shepherd, outside the Bible, carries with it no idea of 
honor or comfort. The shepherd’s duties are unending. Other men, how- 
ever arduous their duties, have their hours of rest. The darkness summons 
them to the place to which they hasten where they sit in quiet and comfort 
with those they love, and then lie down for the sleep so sweet to the laboring 
man. But the duties of the shepherd are unending. The darkness summons 
him to more vigilant watch against the wild beast prowling around the 
sheepfold and the robber watching his opportunity to steal and kill and 
destroy. Nay, the good shepherd must give his life for the sheep. The 
man who will not do this is a hireling and not a shepherd. Can you wonder 
that in this Gospel of love the favorite terms of Christ are shepherd ana 
sheep? I can not better describe the manner in which the charge of Christ 
is to be obeyed than by repeating the words which are constantly in the 
mouth of Paul as he urges upon those to whom he writes the duty of comfort- 
ing, (in the old sense of the English word—strengthening), encouraging, 
rebuking, reproving, exhorting. What can I do better than to quote the 
words in which Paul enforces his idea of the duties of a shepherd in his 
solemn parting address to the elders at Ephesus ?—‘‘ Take heed to yourselves 


362 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit appointed you overseers, to 
shepherd the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood; I 
know that after my departure grievous wolves will enter in among you, not 
sparing the flock; and from among yourselves will men arise, speaking 
perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. Wherefore watch, 
remembering that for the space of three years, night and day, I ceased not 
to admonish every one with tears”. 

Guarding the flock is not the only, indeed not the chief, duty of the 
shepherd. He must lead his flock in green pastures that all their spiritual 
wants be met. This, it is needless to say, can be done only by Christ fill- 
ing the soul. His flesh is meat, indeed, and His blood is drink, indeed. 
He satisfies all the instincts of the renewed nature. 

The guide of the flock must so love Christ that those to whom he 
preaches must have Christ fill their hearts. This can be accomplished only 
by a loving heart presenting the object of love. Doctrine and dogma and 
theory and philosophy and argument, however correct, will not convince the 
opponent or meet the necessities of the inquirer or the indifferent. Christ 
must be preached in love, by love. The one question comes home again to 
any wishing a commission from Christ, ‘‘ Lovest thou Me?” 

This is the reason why Christ asks this question three times. It is to 
emphasize the all-abiding necessity of this one qualification for Christian 
service, a necessity essential in every form of service to every age and con- 
dition. Peter was grieved at the threefold repetition of the inquiry, natur- 
ally grieved, because he did not understand the great compass of the words 
addressed to him. He did not dream that these questions and charges 
stretched over centuries, that they would be the guide of the church for all 
coming time. 

One class of Christ’s sheep yet remains. Our Lord has given special 
directions for the young and for the fullgrown; there is a class for which 
in our ordinary church life no special provision is made. We take care 
for the young, the various organizations formed for their benefit are before 
us continually. Next to them our sermons, our prayers, our efforts are 
inspired by the men and women in active life. When a pastor is to be 
chosen, I need not repeat the inquiry which is sure to be heard. Yet the 
Bible lays great stress on the duty which is owed to the aged, inculcates for 
them great respect, and breathes its blessing on those who love and care 
for them. One may be sure that in our Lord’s provision for His church the 
aged will not be neglected. 

“He saith to him the third time, Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me? 
Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, Lovest thou Me? 
He said to Him, Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love 
Thee. Jesus saith to him, Feed My sheep”. 

Again the verb and the noun are changed. The verb is the same that 
is used in connection with the lambs, for the duty is very much the same; 
the noun, scholars tell us, is the diminutive of the noun translated sheep, in 
v. 16, a very appropriate designation for the aged Christian. For, in many 


THE TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER. 363 


respects, and those most important ones, old age must, in the vast majority 
of cases, be a second childhood. No matter by what loving and considerate 
care surrounded, no matter how carefully the shield is thrown around the 
aged Christian, with what tender anxiety watched, the old man can not but 
be conscious of the decay of his physical strength, and, far worse than that, 
of his mental faculties. No gratitude to his heavenly Father for a sweet 
and peaceful and sunny old age, devoid of care, his wants all supplied, can 
blind him to the fact that his day of active service for his Lord and his 
brethren is passed, that all those with whom he once was in the thickest of 
the fight have passed away, and in the midst of friends who could not be 
kinder he is alone in the world. The cup is put to his lips by the hand he 
loves most and best; he receives it with a gratitude for the past and present 
which can not be expressed in words. But all this, most precious as it is, 
can not change the ingredients of the cup. And as, under the pressure of 
accumulating years, possibly of sorrow and misfortune, the thoughts of the 
aged Christian concentrate in their own grief, he becomes suspicious, queru- 
lous, and makes exorbitant demands on those who have to do with him. 

But there are others whose face, on which divine grace has been work- 
ing these many years, is an inspiration to the minister as he looks over his 
congregation, or enters the room where the aged saint is sitting with the 
Bible before him. There is no pleasanter part of a minister’s duty than to 
feed Christ’s aged sheep. Hecan minister to their faith and hope, he can 
open to them that word which they love so well, he can give them the cup 
of cold water which is to them so welcome, and he finds oftentimes that in 
attempting to bring courage and strength he is the one who has been 
encouraged and strengthened. Hecame to impart a blessing; he goes away 
feeling that his own soul has tasted of the goodness of God in a way entirely 
unanticipated. In every case love will show mercy with cheerfulness, will 
bear another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. The aged Christian 
is one of Christ’s sheep, and the greater the need the more will love desire 
to perform its work, and the more will that love find in doing its work its 
prized reward. Love never faileth. 

How well Peter understood the directions of Christ, and how faithfully 
he followed them may be seen from his two Epistles. The first is addressed 
exclusively to babes in Christ. They are described as newborn, and are 
bidden to desire the pure milk of the word that they may grow thereby. 
The duties inculcated in the first Epistle are all passive virtues—obedience, 
submission, patience under unjust censure, subjection to rulers, husbands, 
masters, to the elder, to one another, and to be clothed with humility. The 
second Epistle is addressed entirely to mature Christians, to those who 
have received the great promised blessings, who have become partakers of 
the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through 
desire. They are bidden to develop a full, round-sided, symmetrical, per- 
fect character, and to be ready for an abundant entrance into the heavenly 
kingdom. Those critics who have doubted the authenticity of the second 
Epistle because of the difference from the first, will find their difficulties 


364 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


removed if they study the two Epistles in the light of Christ’s charge to 
Peter. 

The wisdom which has been manifest in the words of Christ to Peter 
thus far, will shape the manner of their fulfilment. Peter’s life will be what 
the life of every faithful Christian is, a plan of God. The young minister 
looks upon the world and studies his own field of labor. He asks, “‘ Where 
can I best glorify God? Shall I go to an eastern or a western field in my 
own country, or shall I seek a foreign missionary’s work?” At first he 
chooses apparently according to his own convictions and wishes. But as 
he grows in years, more and more is he conscious that his place of labor is 
not determined by his own will. Another girds him and carries where he 
did not wish to go. Asin our families when our children are learning to 
walk, we care not where they turn their steps. From chair to chair we 
watch their little footsteps, and are pleased with their efforts to use their 
new found powers, but when they are older they walk in ways not of their 
own choosing, often sorely against their own inclinations, but in ways which 
show the wisdom of their parents, ways which are indispensable to the 
accomplishment of the purposes which the parent has in view. And in this 
the Christian rejoices. It is his chief joy that in the midst of all his toil 
and perplexities and difficulties he can devoutly say, ‘‘I am here not by my 
own choice or desire or plan; I am here because God put me here, and 
whatever is the outcome I will be glad and grateful”’. 

As we look at the response of Christ to Peter’s answer to the question, 
“ Lovest thou Me?” can we conceive of anything more blessedly welcome? 
“Peter, do you love Me? Then you may work for Me. Peter, do you love 
Me? Then you may live for Me. Peter, do you love Me? Then you may 
die for Me”. Heaven can provide no honor more to be coveted by the 
Christian than these three things. 

In the great crises in the foundation and spread of Christianity, Peter 
and John are associated. They are sent together to make preparations for 
the last Passover. When Mary brings the news of the deserted tomb, they 

-run together to the sepulchre; Peter and John go together to the temple to 
work the first Christian miracle; both are imprisoned and brought before 
the Sanhedrin in consequence; both reply to the accusation; when Samaria 
received the word of God, Peter and John are sent to lay hands on the new 
converts and impart to them the Holy Spirit. Most naturally Peter, having 
received his commission, asks what part in the development of Christianity 
is John to have. It would have been most unbrotherly in him not to show 
this interest in his brother. Christ’s reply is not a rebuke. He would not 
chide Peter for a manifestation of a love which He had Himself created. 
The phrase, ‘“‘ What is that to thee?” and similar ones elsewhere, convey no 
censure ; they declare the clear distinctness of two spheres of office or work. 
Christ says, “If the manifestation of Me through John abides till I come, 
that does not affect your work”’. 

In this light read the respective Epistles of Peter and John. Compare 
or contrast them. Peter addresses strangers and sojourners. There is 


THE TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER. 365 


nothing in his Epistles which can and is not now fully realized. Almost 
every sentence in John’s Epistles is an echo of his words, ‘“‘ Beloved, now are 
we the children of God, but it is not yet manifested what we shall be. We 
know that if He be manifested, we shall be like Him, because we shall see 
Him as He is”. ’ 

*‘And there are also many things which Jesus did; the which if they 
should be written every one I suppose the world itself would not contain the 
books that should be written”. To which we will all say, “Amen”. For 
when one is reading the Gospel and Epistles of John he seems to himself 
like a man in whose hands are the lower links of a chain of gold let down 
from the throne of God. He values as beyond price what he sees, but he is 
conscious that there is infinite wealth beyond his vision. May that untold 
treasure one day be ours. 


* THE IMPORT OF ST. JOHN 23: 15-17. 


BY REV. GALUSHA ANDERSON, Ss. T&T D. Ea we 


THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, ILL. 


It seems to me to be probable that the Gospel usually attributed to the 
Apostle John close with the twentieth chapter. Its concluding sentences 
are,—‘‘ Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, 
which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye may believe 
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have 
life in His name”. Here the author refers to certain events which he has 
not incorporated in his writing; calls what he has written “this book”, 
and specifically states the object which he had in view in writing it. If 
there were not another chapter, every intelligent reader would regard 
this as a very natural and fitting close to all that goes before in this 
Gospel. 

Still, what is presented in the opening sentences of the twenty-first 
chapter is very closely and vitally linked with the events before related: 
* After these things Jesus manifested Himself again to the disciples at the 
Sea of Tiberias’. It is not, therefore, surprising that some thoughtful 
interpreters should conclude, that, notwithstanding the last words of the 
preceding chapter seem to note a formal close of the Gospel, it did not end 
there, but instead, the author wrote right on without lapse of time or break 
of thought to the close of the twenty-first chapter. Nevertheless, to my own 
mind, the most natural and satisfactory view is that the Gospel really closes 
with the last words of the twentieth chapter; and that after a longer or 
shorter period the author added what we have in the twenty-first chapter as 
a postscript. By the concatenation of events it is vitally linked with the 
preceding, but in form it appears to be something added to that which 
had been considered as finished. This view satisfactorily accounts both 

‘for the juxtaposition of thought and the form of literary expression. 

The author’s motive for writing this postscript seems to have been twofold. 
First, his Gospel may have been criticised as fragmentary and incomplete. 
He therefore decided to add an account of the very important manifesta- 
tion of the risen Lord to His disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. Having done 
this, at the close of the postscript he formally defends the incompleteness of 
his Gospel by saying, ‘‘And there are also many other things which Jesus 
did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the 
world itself could not contain the books that should be written’. But, in 
the second place, from what transpired at this third manifestation of Christ 


* Delivered at the Eighth Conference, held at All Saints Memorial Church, May 11, 1904. 


366 


THE IMPORT OF ST. JOHN 21 : 15-17. 367 


to His disciples, a report sprang up and had gone abroad among believers 
that Jesus had declared that the author of this Gospel should not die. It 
was afalse report and on that ground alone, an honest man would be 
strongly moved to contradict it; but the report put the writer into wrong 
relations with his fellow disciples. As the brethren of Joseph regarded 
him as a favorite of their Father, so, if this false rumor should remain 
uncontradicted, the disciples might regard the writer of this Gospel as one 
on whom Jesus had conferred special honors. If the report should not be 
corrected, it might awaken jealousies, jeopardize the success of the apostle’s - 
labor, and stand in the way of the establishment of the Kingdom of God. 
So, near the close of his postscript he takes pains explicitly and positively 
to contradict it. . 

If it should be asked why the author did not in his postscript simply 
deny the false rumor concerning himself, without treating at considerable 
length the third manifestation of Jesus to His disciples after His resurrec- 
tion, the obvious answer is, that he felt it to be important to place fully 
before the disciples all the circumstances out of which such a rumor arose. 
Thus all could see how naturally it sprung up, and that it was simply a 
perversion of a very important ethical lesson. This lesson we shall consider 
later in 1ts proper relation. 

That the body of the Gospel and this postscript were written by the 
same hand scarcely admits of a doubt. Both were evidently penned by an 
eye-witness. We grant that there may be some incidents delineated in this 
Gospel of which the writer may not have been personally cognizant and 
which may have been reported to him by Jesus Himself; but nearly the 
whole of this Gospel is manifestly the testimony of what the writer saw and 
heard. Take for instance the record of the first miracle at Cana of Galilee, 
where as invited guests at a wedding were Jesus, His mother and His 
disciples. During the progress of the feast the wine is exhausted. On 
account of it the family is greatly embarrassed, and Jesus’ mother, sharing 
in their anxiety, hastens to her Son and delicately suggests to Him that He 
should work a miracle to meet the exigency. Hegently rebukesher. She, 
however, nothing daunted, said to the servants, ‘‘ Whatsoever He saith unto 
you, do it’. Jn due time He said to them, “ Fill with water the six stone 
waterpots”, and they filled them up tothe brim. Then in the presence of 
its Lord the water blushes into wine; whereupon He commands them to 
draw it out and bear it to the ruler of the feast. He in astonishment com- 
ments on the superior excellence of the wine. If any one should now tell a 
story of a wedding, artlessly painting the scene in all of its interesting 
details, the hearer would instinctively exclaim, ‘‘ Why, you were there then !”’; 
and the hearer would think for the nonce that he was there too. What may 
be said of this, we are also constrained to say of most of the scenes depicted 
in this Gospel. Jesus at Jacob’s well, in the household at Bethany, at the 
grave of Lazarus, in the upper room when He said to Thomas, ‘‘ Reach 
hither thy finger and see My hands”, and many other notable incidents 
are so narrated that ordinary, intelligent readers never for a moment 


368 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


doubt that we have here the words of one who saw and heard what 
he reports. 

If we turn to this postscript we find the same subtle, convincing evidence 
that the writer of it declared what was presented to his eye and ear. There 
were together seven disciples; three of them are named by the writer and 
partially described; two are not named but are so described that we know 
who they were; two others are not identified. Then we have the declara- 
‘tion by the foremost disciple that he is going a fishing, and the quick response 
_of the rest that they would go with him. Then follows their fruitless toiling 
during the night, the Stranger on the shore just at the grey dawn, His 
friendly salutation, and His direction as to handling the net which brought 
instant success, the swim of Peter to the shore, the burning coals, the 
bread, the fish, the breakfast, the colloquy that followed,—all so unmistakably 
suggest the words of an eye and ear witness, that a fool could not err in 
reference to it. If an eye-witness wrote this Gospel and this postscript of 
it, they were not written by some elder, whose name was John, who lived 
about the middle of the second century. 

Again, the style of both the Gospel and the postscript shows that the 
same hand that wrote the one wrote also the other. The style of this writer 
is distinctive, unique; it is distinctive in its severe simplicity ; in its clear and 
subtle distinctions ; in its suggestions of vast unexplored regions of thought. 
The critics say that he did not write good Greek, classical Greek; grant it, 
but he so wrote that he has impressed and stirred the profoundest intellects 
of all the ages of the Christian church, and has also been read with special 
delight and profit by the lowly of all lands. And this simple, subtle, sug- 
gestive style characterizes both the Gospel and its postscript. 

Moreover, this eye-witness with his unmatched style sets forth in both 
the Gospel and the postscript the same great thought. While fully and 
unhesitatingly presenting to us the humanity of Christ, he wrote that he 
might set forth with special emphasis His divine nature, His deity. So the 
first sentence of his Gospel is: ‘‘In the beginning”’, in eternity, “‘ was the 
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. ‘And the 
Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as 
of the only begotten [begotten as no other being ever was] from the Father), 
full of grace and truth”. In His conflict with the Pharisees He announces 
Himself as that bread that came down from heaven, of which if a man eat 
he shall never hunger; He claims that He shall raise the dead and judge 
the world, and calls upon all men to honor Him even as they honor the 
Father; He declares that He existed before Abraham, that he that hath 
seen Him hath seen the Father, that all that the Father possesses He 
possesses,—‘‘All things that are Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine”; He 
prays to the Father, ‘“‘Glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory 
which I had with Thee before the world was”. And just at the close of the 
Gospel, Thomas, delivered from all doubt of Christ’s resurrection, said unto 
Him, ‘‘ My Lord and my God”. Then the writer of the Gospel adds: ‘‘ These 
things are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God”’. 


THE IMPORT OF ST. JOHN 21 : 15-17. 369 


The great truth that Jesus is the Son of God, the divine Lord, is also 
the central, unifying thought of the postscript. Itis the risen Lord that 
manifests Himself on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, provides food for 
His hungry followers, controls the fish of the sea, presents Himself as the 
supreme object of their love, commands the foremost disciple to follow 
Him, unveils to him the manner of His death, and speaks of His own future 
coming. 

Who is the eye-witness that wrote both this Gospel and postscript 
alike in style, dominated by the same great vitalizing thought of a divine 
Saviour? The writer himself replies: ‘‘I am he who leaned back on His 
breast (on Jesus’ breast) at the supper, and said, ‘Lord, who is he that 
betrayeth Thee?’ I wrote these things, and know that what I have written 
is true”. And after all the hair-splitting criticism of the past and of today, 
on good and sufficient evidence we hold fast to the position that John the 
apostle wrote both the Gospel and the postscript. 

But a more important matter demands our attention. What is.the real 
significance of this postscriptr What is its central, unifying idea? Is it 
not Peter’s confession of supreme love to the divine Christ and his public 
restoration to the office that the Master had called him to fill, and from 
which, by his denial he had fallen? So far as we are able let us grasp the 
meaning of this great passage of Scripture. 

Since His resurrection, Jesus had already appeared twice to ‘he eleven ; 
once to ten of them on the evening of His resurrection day, in the upper 
room at Jerusalem, Thomas being absent; one week later in the same room 
to them all, Thomas being present, when with all the ardor of his nature he 
said to Christ, ‘‘My Lord and my God”. Now for many days Jesus left 
these disciples to their own reflections. At last time began to hang heavily 
on mind and heart; for their own happiness they needed employment. 
Most of them also were poor. It is not unlikely that their purses needed 
replenishing. In these circumstances it was very natural for them to turn 
to that calling with which they were most familiar. And just as we should 
reasonably expect, the energetic, impulsive Peter was the first to say to his 
fellows, ‘‘I go a fishing”. It needed only this declaration from him to 
elicit their prompt response, ‘‘ We also come with thee”. They got into a 
boat in the evening and pushed out a little way from shore, and began their 
toil for the night. There were only seven of them, Peter, Thomas, Nathaniel, 
James and John, and two others whose names are not mentioned. As it is 
sometimes with fishermen, their toil during the live-long night was bootless. 
Just at the break of day they saw, as they supposed, a stranger on the shore. 
But this stranger evidently had a lively interest in them, for His voice came 
sweetly across the waters, ‘‘ Children, have ye aught to eat?”’ They respect- 
fully answered the questioner, ‘‘ No”. Did not the address, “ children” make 
them think that He was not wholly a stranger? Hecried to them, ‘‘ Cast the 
- net on the right side of the boat, and ye shall find”. There was something 
commanding and compelling in the words that He uttered, for they at once 
do His bidding. Immediately the net is filled with fish. It is so heavy that 


370 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


they are not able to draw it up into the boat; they can only drag it along in 
the sea. What passed through John’s mind we do not certainly know. 
Perhaps he remembered a similar draught of fishes from that same 
sea soon after they began to follow the Lord. Perhaps he thought, 
there stands the one who is Lord of “‘ whatsoever passeth through the paths 
of the seas’’. But whatever was the process of his thought, as soon as the 
net was filled with fishes, John said to Peter, “‘Itis the Lord!” When 
Peter heard that, he girt his coat about him, plunged into the sea and swam 
Straight to the shore. He must be the first to greet his Lord! Peter’s 
feeling was vastly different from what it was when, near the beginning of 
Christ’s ministry, obeying the word of Jesus he let down his net and enclosed 
a multitude of fishes. At that time he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, 
‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord”; but Peter had grown 
spiritually since that day. Now, instead of praying the Lord to depart from 
him he swims to the shore that he may at once be with Him. What passed 
between them we do not know. The rest of the disciples came in the boat 
dragging the net with fishes. Stepping upon the shore an unexpected sight 
greeted their eyes. There were at their feet glowing coals, toasting bread 
and broiling fish. Their Lord had not been unmindful of their hunger, and 
had bountifully provided for their wants. But since it is His will that men 
should ever co-operate with Him in meeting their necessities, He said, 
“‘ Bring of the fish which ye have now taken”. It is nowthe ardent, zealous 
Peter, who, before any of his fellow disciples, steps onto the boat, grasps 
the net and drags it to the shore. How natural the action that follows! 
They all gather about the full but unrent net and count the fishes taken out, 
perhaps more than once, and find that there are one hundred, fifty and 
three. Some of them are now probably dressed and broiled that the repast 
may be abundant for these hungry fishermen. And when all is ready, the 
Lord, the provider of the table, says to them, ‘‘ Come and break your fast ”’, 
just our familiar, ‘‘ Come to breakfast ”. 

But thus far in the passage there is no hint that the disciples talked 
with Jesus. There is a strong indication that they did not. They seemed 
to have been filled with reverential awe. They knew that it was the Lord; 
but as gratifying as it would have been to have their positive conviction 
confirmed by a declaration from His lips, no one of them ventured to ask, 
“Who art Thou?”’ And at the moment when the breakfast was fully pre- 
pared, Jesus seemed to have been standing alittle aloof from them, for He 
“‘ cometh and taketh the bread and giveth them, and the fish likewise”. He 
who provided the feast is both the host and the servant of His hungry 
brethren. 

We come now to the great central lesson of the Scripture in hand. The 
preceding lessons are of high import. The waiting of these disciples after 
their risen Lord showed Himself to them the second time must have seemed 
to them long and weary. It must have been a severe trial to their faith. 
But His third appearance to them showed them that their Lord had not 
forgotten nor abandoned them. Ever watchful over them, and still training 


THE IMPORT OF ST. JOHN 21 : 15-17. 371 


them for their future labor, He once more taught them by this draught of 
fishes that their future success in catching men, lifting them out of this 
world and bringing them into His kingdom, depended on prompt obedience 
to His word; not by their toil alone, however persistent, but by His accom- 
panying and energizing word should they realize their mission. That 
draught of fishes was putting into concrete form the old, but ever vital 
prophetic message, ‘‘ Not by might nor by power, but by My spirit saith the 
Lord of hosts”. He had also taught them by the breakfast which He had 
prepared for them on the shore that it was His purpose to care even for the 
bodily wants of His toiling disciples. They were not to expect luxury, but 
such wholesome food as would fit them for the most efficient labor in saving 
souls. But all this simply led up to a still more important lesson for them 
all, and especially for Peter, to whom it was particularly directed. 

The breakfast was over. The appetites of ‘all were satisfied. The 
divine host, the risen Lord, turned His eyes full upon Peter. It may have 
reminded that disciple of the look which the suffering Saviour gave him in 
the palace of Caiaphas, which melted him to repentance; and as the risen 
Lord looked way down into the depths of Peter’s heart, the searching words 
were poured into his ears, ‘‘ Simon, son of John (R. V.), lovest thou Me more 
than these?” This disciple had received from his Lord the name of Peter, 
but in this interview Jesus discards it and goes back to the old name of His 
disciple. In view of what he did at his Lord’s trial before Caiaphas, to have 
called him Peter, Rock, would have been little short of cutting, bitter sar- 
casm. This, in probing Peter’s conscience, the Lord avoids. 

Also in this first question Jesus used the phrase, ‘“‘ More than these”’. 
The interrogatory was, ‘‘Do you love Me more genuinely, more truly than 
do your fellow disciples? Is your love superior to that of these brethren 
with whom you have just partaken of this frugal meal?”” This carried Peter 
back a few days to the time of his self-confidence and self-assurance, to the 
hour when his Lord said, “‘ All ye shall be offended in Me this night”’, and 
he in his overweening trust in himself had contradicted his Master and 
declared, ‘‘If all shall be offended in Thee”’, if all shall stumble into sin 
because of Thee, on account of what Thou art or dost, ‘‘I will never be 
offended ”’, I will never stumble into sin, thus putting himself above his 
fellows. And when in spite of his lofty and loud profession of fidelity Jesus 
said to him, ‘‘ This night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny Me thrice”’, 
he vehemently affirmed, “‘ Even if I must die with Thee, yet will I not 
deny Thee”. But while his boastful words still rung in the ears of his 
fellow disciples, he, on account of what his Lord was passing through, 
stumbled more deeply into sin than any of them, cowardly denying his Lord, 
even with cursing and swearing. Of his assumed superiority over his fellows, 
of his boastfulness and shameful fall, those words, ‘“‘more than these”’, 
forcefully reminded him. But when he answered the heart-searching question, 
he made no allusion to others, but simply affirmed his love to his Lord, 
justifying the sincerity of his profession by appealing to the Lord’s knowl- 
edge of his heart: ‘Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee”. Boast- 


372 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


’ fulness over others is gone; trust in the omniscient Lord has taken the place 
of trust in self. On the basis of this profession of his love, the Master bade 
him, ‘“‘ Feed My lambs ”’. 

But the Lord said the second time, ‘“‘Simon, son of John, lovest thou 
Me?” and received the same answer as before; and on the basis of Peter’s 
twice-professed love, He bade him, ‘‘Tend My sheep”. 

But the third time the same question came from the lips of the risen 
Lord, and ‘‘ Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, 
lovest thou Me?” Why was he grieved? 

Ordinarily such repetition of a question would suggest to the one inter- 
rogated that the questioner doubted his truthfulness. But Peter’s twice- 
repeated ‘‘Thou knowest that I love Thee” seems to me to preclude the 
entertainment of any such notion by him. And Jesus’ commands, ‘“‘ Feed My 
lambs,—tend My sheep”, apparently show that Jesus thoroughly believed 
that Peter was honest and that his love was genuine. So Peter could not 
have been grieved by entertaining the notion that the Lord doubted him. 

His grief arose from the fact that the third repetition of the question 
brought back vividly and powerfully the whole scene of his cowardly denial. 
Before his fall Jesus said to him, ‘‘Thou shalt deny Me thrice ””—¢hree times. 
When he had entered into the court of the palace of Caiaphas, the maid 
that kept the door accused him of being a disciple of the Nazarene, and he 
denied it. He now retreated from the fire in the open court, where he was 
warming himself, into the shadow of the arch that led from the street to the 
court; but very soon another maid saw him and said to the crowd in the 
court; ‘‘ This man also was with Jesus the Nazarene”’, and he denied it with 
an oath. He again joins those who stood by the fire, and they at once 
question him, ‘ Art thou also one of His disciples?”’ He denied, and said, 
“Tam not”. Twice now, before all those in the open court he has denied 
his Lord, confirming his last denial with a solemn oath. 

About an hour after, they in the open court declared to Peter, “Of a 
truth thou art also one of them, for thy speech betrayeth thee”’, thou art a 
Galilean. And one of them directly appealed to him, “ Did I not see thee 

‘in the garden with Him?” Peter now lost his balance, began to curse and 
swear, and declare between his oaths that he did not know Jesus. This is 
the third denial. Now the Lord turned and looked upon Peter. Then the 
crowing of the cock brought to the mind of the faithless disciple Jesus’ 
words, ‘“‘ Verily I say unto thee, that this night, before the cock crow, thou 
shalt deny Me thrice”—/+hree times. Keenly conscious of his threefold 
denial Peter wept, and went out of the court and found some secret place 
and there wept bitterly. That ‘three-fold denial prophesied by Christ, 
enacted by Peter, was branded upon the very substance of his soul. He 
could never forget it. Tradition says that ever after there was a tear in his 
eye. Jesus by the words, ‘more than these”, had already carried him back 
to the hour of his boastful self-confidence, and the whole sad history that 
followed was vividly before him. He heard the Master again, “‘ Thou shalt 
deny Me three times ”’,—his three awful denials sounded through the halls 


THE [IMPORT OF ST. JOHN 21: 15-17. 373 


of his memory; nothing so aroused and touched him to the quick as that 
three times. This the Master knew; and that he might probe His disciple’s 
conscience to the core, three times He asked, ‘‘Simon, son of John, lovest 
thou Me?” But when He asked it the third time, Peter’s soul was pierced 
with the sharpest grief, and he answered, very likely with tears and sobs, 
“Tord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee”. ‘‘ Jesus 
said unto him, Feed My sheep”. 

What was the Lord’s object in all this? Surely He would not have 
caused His disciple to feel any unnecessary pang. But Peter had greatly 
sinned. The fact that all things considered he was the foremost disciple 
made his offence all the greater. So the Lord determined thoroughly to 
probe his conscience; that through and through he might be contrite and 
might realize in the very depths of his consciousness that he had repented 
of his great sin. And it was important also that he should make this three- 
fold confession of his love for Jesus before his fellow disciples, that they too 
might be fully and impressively assured of the depth and genuineness of his 
compunction. 

Nor must we forget that he had been openly chosen by Christ to do a 
great and specific work, and had been put by Him into the most exalted 
office of the infant church. On the one hand he was called to be a fisher of 
men—that was his distinctive task; but on the other hand, he with others 
had been separated from the rank and file of the followers of Christ and 
made an apostle,—that was his high station. 

Moreover, with two others he had been distinguished even from the 
twelve and drawn into closer personal relations with his Lord than they. 
On account of this intimate relationship he went with Jesus up into the 
Mount of Transfiguration. In an ever memorable interview he had been 
foremost in confessing that Jesus was ‘“‘the Christ, the Son of the living 
God”’, and in turn had received the special blessing of his Lord. When 
Jesus felt the sorest need of human sympathy, Peter with James and John 
had gone with Him into the shadow and gloom of Gethsemane. But by 
his open and thrice-repeated denial of the Lord who had so highly honored 
him, he had miserably fallen from his high vocation and office and brought 
discredit upon his great confession. It was therefore necessary that his 
restoration to his work and office should be, if possible, as public and con- 
spicuous as had been his denial and fall. He himself needed to know that 
his Lord had not only forgiven his great sin, but had recalled him to his 
work and had put him once more into his former position. If in the future 
he was to work effectively for the salvation of men, there must not be so much 
as one faint, lingering doubt of his complete pardon by his Lord and full 
restoration to his work and apostleship. This was necessary, not only for 
him, but also for his fellow apostles. To insure their faith in Peter and in his 
leadership, they too must know beyond a peradventure that the past had been 
blotted out by Christ, and that he who under stress and in fear had denied 
his Lord, had once more His full confidence, and was re-commissioned by 
Him to do the work and to fill the office to which he was originally called. 


374 x THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 





So the Master, in the presence of six of Peter’s apostolic associates, 
bids him three times, answering to his threefold denial and threefold con- 
fession of love, to care for and nourish the lambs and sheep of his flock. 
If, in the future, some one objecting should say, ‘‘ Why is this apostle, who 
thrice denied his Lord, so prominent and aggressive in service?””—six men, 
associates with him in labor, could bear witness that the risen Lord, in 
their presence and hearing, three times commanded him to do this work; 
He solemnly re-commissioned him thrice over to care for those who believe 
in Him and follow Him; over against each shameful denial He placed His 
renewed commission, “‘ Feed My lambs; Feed My sheep”. And if, there- 
after, the conscience of Peter at times should accuse him afresh for his 
recreant acts and words in the palace of Caiaphas—as it doubtless did—he 
would hear over against his repeated denial the Master’s repeated re-com- 
mission, and be reassured and comforted and enabled to go on in peace 
with his great work. 

While his work was ome, it was two-sided. He was under Christ to bring 
men out of the world into the kingdom of God ; according to the terms of 
his original commission he was to catch men—and then nourish them and 
build them up “into the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ”. 
Peter certainly did the first; how successfully the results of his preaching at 
Jerusalem on the day of Pentacost, and subsequently in the house of Cor- 
nelius in Czsarea testify. But it is worthy of note that when the risen Lord, 
at the Sea of Tiberias, recommissioned Peter it was the second phase 
of his work that he specially emphasized, the nourishing, the caring for the 
sheep. Jesus had intimated to Peter, even before his denial, that this was 
to be his pre-eminent task. Predicting his temporary downfall, He said— 
oh, with what tender solicitude—“ But I made supplication for thee, that 
thy faith fail not; and do thou when once thou hast turned again, establish 
thy brethren”. The Epistles of Peter bear witness that the apostle gave 
himself with great assiduity to the work of feeding ‘“‘the elect who are 
sojourners of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and 
Bithynia’’. And in his first Epistle the once self-confident apostle strength- 
ened the brethren not only with the great central truths of the Gospel, but 
also out of the depths of his own experience as he wrote: “ Yea, all of you 
gird yourselves with humility, to serve one another; for God resisteth the 
proud *’—that is the cry from Peter’s soul, when he went out and wept bit- 
terly—“ but giveth grace to the humble ”—an echo of what was granted to 
contrite humble Peter when his risen Lord, forgiving and forgetting His 
great sin, said to him, “‘ Feed My lambs”. 

And we must not fail to notice that the Lord in this personal colloquy 
with Peter made love, just as Paul did, the supreme grace. He did not ask 
his penitent apostle whether he believed in Him, or had hope of eternal 
life, but whether he loved Him, and on the emphatic confession of that 
grace He publicly restored him to his work and office. The Lord demanded 
positive, unmistakable love because that grace pre-eminently determines 
character. What a man loves reveals unerringly what he is. 


THE IMPORT OF ST. JOHN 21 : 15-17. 375 


Moreover, the object towards which we must exercise supreme love is 
here clearly presented to us. ‘‘Lovest thou Me?” Jesus did not ask, 
“Dost thou love God?” —although He had taught with iteration and 
emphasis that the first great commandment is, ‘‘ Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” 
(Matt. 22:37). Did He then in this colloquy with Peter repudiate what He 
had before taught? Nay, verily! He who talked with penitent Simon, 
“in the beginning ”’—in eternity—‘‘ was with God, and was God”. It was 
He concerning whom Jehovah said: ‘“ Let all the angels of God worship 
Him”. He had become flesh and dwelt among us. He had conquered 
death on our behalf. Just because He was God, He claimed for Himself 
the absolute love of Peter. ‘‘Lovest thou W/e?” Before His crucifixion 
He said to Philip: ‘‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father’; and 
with His reiterated question to Simon befere us, without any fear of making 
a mistake, we can add: ‘“ He that loves the risen Lord loves the Father ”’. 
That the Father is well pleased when we render supreme love to Christ, 
Jesus declares in these words: ‘‘ He that loveth Me shall be loved of My 
Father” (John 14:21). 

But in the report of Christ’s conversation with penitent Peter on the 
shore of Tiberias, do the words used by John to designate the act of loving 
throw any special light on this great transaction? In the first and second 
questions we have agagao ; this word signifies loving with esteem ; it usually 
involves the notion of admiration of righteous character, and the purpose of 
bestowing kindness on the one esteemed and admired. Its Latin synonym is 
diligo. It is a word that pre-eminently expresses the Christian conception 
of loving. 

In the third question we find phz/eo. This signifies love which expresses 
itself through feeling, emotion; it conveys the notion of instinctive, warm, 
personal affection. This verb is found in every one of Peter’s replies; 
probably expressing his warm personal affection for Jesus. Its Latin syno- 
nym is @mo. Some interpreters think that Jesus’ use of pfz/eo instead of 
agapao, in the third question, was what caused the grief of Peter; they sug- 
gest that the word made Peter think that the Lord called in question his 
personal attachment to Him, and this broke the heart of the ardent disciple. 

But all such interpretations, it seems to me, inject into the text what it 
does not contain. We grant freely that there is a distinction between the 
two verbs, agapao and phzleo; but the demarcation between them is not 
rigid and absolute. The classical Greek writer expressed by fAz/eo not only 
warm personal love, but also love of esteem for character. But, confining 
ourselves simply to the writings of the New Testament, it is clear that in 
them these two words were sometimes used interchangeably. To be sure, 
agapao is used in a very large majority of the passages where the act of love 
is set forth, but not in all. And it is not always used to express esteem for 
- righteousness or righteous character, but sometimes to express the love of 
self and pelf. For example, the Pharisees loved (agapao) the chief seats in 
the synagogue (Luke 11:42), and Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved 


Ph re 


376 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


(agapao) the hire of wrong-doing. And while agapao is more frequently 
employed by New Testament writers than p/z/eo, the latter is often used by 
them to set forth love not only in the lower but also in the higher relations, 
and they employed both alike to express love on the same plane and for the 
same object. For example, Jesus says of the Pharisees (Matt. 23:6) they 
love (fAz/eo) the chief places at feasts and the chief seats in the synagogue ; 
whereas Luke reports (Luke 11:43) Jesus as saying to the Pharisees, ‘“‘ Ye 
love (agapao) the chief seats in the synagogue”. In these pasSages the 
two verbs are used interchangeably ; the one regarded as fit as the other to 
express love for that which ministers to personal vanity. 

It has been claimed that agafao is the word used to express love in all 
the higher and more sacred relations of life, and we grant that in the New 
Testament it is by far the most frequently employed to set forth love in such 
relations, but by no means exclusively. For example, while Paul (Eph. 
5:25) in one Epistle exhorts husbands to love (agafao) their wives, in 
another Epistle (Titus 2:4) he directs that the young women be trained to 
love (pfzleo) their husbands and their children. P/z/eo is also used in the 
same Epistle to express brotherly love (Titus 3:15): “‘ Salute them that love 
(pAileo) us in faith”. And in 1 Pet. 3:8 we read: “Loving (phileo) as 
brethren ’’; the Greek word is a compound, “ brethren-lovers ”’. 

Phileo is also used in the New Testament to express the love that men 
should have to the Lord. Paul wrote to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 16:22): 
“Tf any man loveth (fAz/eo) not the Lord, let him be anathema”. And it 
is also employed to set forth Christ’s love both to His special friends and to 
His children. Of His love to His special friends we have two examples, in 
both of which the two verbs are used interchangeably (John 11:5): “‘ Now 
Jesus loved (agapaco) Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus’’; but as Jesus 
went weeping to the grave of Lazarus, the Jews who were looking on said, 
“ Behold how He loved (pfz/eo) him”’. But, if possible, we have a more 
striking example of the interchangeable use of these verbs in the charac- 
terization of Jesus’s special love for John. In John 13:23 we read: “ There 
was at the table reclining in Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples whom Jesus 

“loved” (agapao) ; but on the morning of the resurrection, we are told by the 
same writer (20:2), that Mary Magdalene “cometh to Simon Peter and to 
the other disciple whom Jesus loved” (pAz/eo). 

But in the Revelation the love of the exalted and glorified Jesus for His 
followers is expressed by p/z/eo (Rev. 3:19), ‘As many as I love (phz/eo) I 
rebuke and chasten”. But our argument is cumulative, since, in the New 
Testament the love of God the Father for His children is expressed by 
phileo. Jesus, in His great farewell discourse, said to His disciples (John 
16:27): “For the Father Himself loveth you (pfz/eo), because ye have 
loved (pAz/eo) Me”. Here we have both the love of God to His children 
and their love to His eternal Son expressed by Phz/eo. But phileo was 
regarded by John as a fit vehicle for the expression of the love of God the 
Father for His only-begotten Son (John 5:20). In reporting Jesus’ words 
he says, ‘‘ For the Father loveth (A/z/eo) the Son”’. 


THE IMPORT OF ST. JOHN 21 : 15-17. 377 


We see, then, that pf%z/eo is employed by New Testament writers, and 
especially by the writer of the Fourth Gospel, to express love even in all the 
highest and most sacred relations of men to one another and to God, and 
of God to men, and even of the Father tothe Son. Moreover, we have 
seen how the author of the Fourth Gospel, at times, uses the two verbs, 
agapao and phileo, interchangeably. If he did this in the body of his Gos- 
pel, in all probability he did it also in the postscript of his Gospel. And 
such marked distinctions between these verbs as the critics have made, dis- 
tinctions of which John evidently never dreamed, loads a simple and impor- 
tant narrative with far-fetched philological speculations which obscure its 
real meaning, which shroud its light in mist. John probably instinctively 
used both of these verbs, which are substantially synonymous, just as any 
writer would do now, simply to give variety to his diction and avoid monot- 
ony of style. 

But still another consideration, it seems to us, ought to check the 
speculations of commentators on the difference in the meaning of these two 
verbs. Whether Jesus in His colloquy with Peter used one word to express 
the act of loving or two words we cannot tell. 

If He used two, whether there was a shade of difference between them 
we cannot now ascertain. We have no conclusive evidence that He spoke 
Greek. That He possibly might have done so we must of course grant, 
since both John and Peter, a few years later, wrote in that tongue. But 
scholars generally hold that Jesus spoke Aramaic. In that dialect of the 
Hebrew He and Peter probably spoke with each other on the shore of 
Tiberias. That John has faithfully reported the conversation I, for one, 
have not the shadow of a doubt. But if in the colloquy Jesus used two 
words to express the act of loving, nobody now knows what they were, so 
no one can now intelligently speculate about them. While the two verbs 
found in John’s report, we have already shown, were used interchangeably 
by him in his Gospel and in all probability in the twenty-first chapter, 
which we have treated as a postscript to his Gospel. 

It still remains for us to inquire what is meant by the love on which 
Jesus so strenuously insisted. Not, certainly, simply emotion excited by 
some object and lavished upon it. That emotion attends love is true, but it 
is not the love itself. In the last analysis love is pre-eminently preference. 
One who loves prefers some object above all others, and that preference 
bends all the powers of the one preferring to the service of the object 
supremely preferred. Such a preference, leading all the activities of the 
soul in its train is always attended with pleasurable sensibility, often with 
powerful emotion; but to mistake the sensibility or the emotion for the love, 
for supreme preference, frequently leads to mischief. Now, this is the pur- 
port of Jesus’ question to Peter. ‘Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me, pre- 
ferest thou Me above all others? So preferest thou Me that every energy 
of thy being flows full-tide into glad service to Me?”’ 

This question leads us finally tc ask, What are the fruits of such love? 
Regarding Christ as the one supremely preferred, such preference, such 


378 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


love, naturally expresses itself in obedience and service. And here we dis- 
cern another ligament which binds this postscript with the body of the 
Gospel. Christ in His last great discourse to His disciples before His 
agony in the garden said: “If ye love Me ye will keep My command- 
ments’. He here calls on Peter to illustrate this general principle in his 
life. By His probing questions He makes His disciple more profoundly 
conscious of love to Him; He still further deepens Peter’s consciousness of 
love by leading him ardently to profess it again and again, and at each pro- 
fession of it He calls upon him to manifest it in obedience and loving 
service. ‘‘Thou knowest that I love Thee’’, says the penitent Peter; 
“Then”, says the risen Lord, ‘‘show your love by tenderly caring for My 
sheep ”’. 

But such love not only expresses itself in assiduous toil for others, but 
it enables those who exercise it to endure without murmur the severest 
hardships and sharpest trials in the service of their divine Lord. Jesus 
had no sooner said in response to Simon’s third confession of his love, 
“Feed My sheep”’, than, without a break, He went straight on to say to 
him: ‘‘ Verily, verily, I say unto thee, when thou wast young thou girdedst 
thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldest; but when thou shalt be old, thou 
shalt stretch forth thy hands and another shall gird thee and carry thee 
whither thou wouldest not. But this He spake, signifying by what manner 
of death he should glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He saith 
unto him, Follow Me”’. 

The writer has not left us in doubt as to the main import of these 
words; they were a prophesy that Peter, after he had grown gray in his 
Master’s service, should suffer a violent death. ‘‘ Thou shalt stretch forth 
thy hands and another shall gird thee”, may be a distinctive prophecy that 
he should be taken into custody by the officers of the government, who 
would bind his hands with cords, just as they bound Jesus’ hands when they 
apprehended Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, and carry him whither he 
would not—take him away to his trial in the court—or the words may refer 
to death by crucifixion. When one was crucified he was not always nailed 
to a cross, but sometimes lashed to it by cords. The cross was laid on the 
ground, the victim was bound to it; it was then lifted with the victim upon 
it to an upright position and made fast in the earth. The few words of 
Jesus may have been an outline picture of this. But if reasonable objection 
may be made to any specific interpretation of the words, John, by his com- 
ment has made it clear that they refer to Simon’s martyrdom. And that 
reveals their vital connection with what goes immediately before. For 
when Jesus had predicted Simon’s violent death He said to him, “ Follow 
Me”. ‘Your love must be such that it will lead you to follow Me, what- 
ever awaits you. You may have manifold and bitter trials; a violent death 
when you are an old man will be your lot, nevertheless, follow me; if that 
love that you have thrice so emphatically confessed is genuine, you will not 
only gladly feed My sheep, but for My sake you will die without a murmur, 
lashed to a cross”. 


THE IMPORT OF ST. JOHN 21 : 15-17. 379 


‘“‘ But last of all, if your love is genuine it will enable you to be stead- 
fast in My service irrespective of what I do to others”. Peter followed 
his risen Lord as He walked along the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, 
and looking back he saw John a little behind them, also following. 
Now as the Lord had lifted the curtain and revealed to Peter something of 
his future, his curiosity was excited to know what was to be John’s career 
and fate; so he asked: ‘“ Lord, and what shall this man do?” Jesus saith 
unto him, “If I will that he tarry till I come what is that to thee?” Then 
again Jesus said to him, “ Foliow thou Me”. “ No matter how I may order 
the life of John, his career and fate do not change your duty. If I will that 
he tarry on the earth until I come again, that will not absolve you from My 
service. If you indeed love Me you will follow Me, however much the 
condition of others may differ from your own”. 

This chapter, then, so full of varied and interesting incident is instinct 
with one great thought, the genuine love of the disciple for his Master. 
All the events in the first of the chapter lead directly up to the question 
which the risen Lord asks Simon. It is an inquiry as to the fact of his love 
to Him. His love for Jesus is thrice confessed. Its fruit is obedient serv- 
ice, no matter how bitter the trials such service may involve, or how the 
Lord may see fit to make our condition to differ from that of others. 

We have considered not merely an interesting fact of Gospel history, 
but a truth which “takes hold on our business and bosoms”. Simon’s 
risen Lord is ours also. Heasks us, as we read this Scripture, the same 
question that He asked him. “James, son of Charles, lovest thou Me? 
Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee. Then nurture those children 
that I have given thee ‘in the chastening and admonition of the Lord’”. 
** Theodore, son of Christopher, lovest thou Me? Yea, Lord, thou knowest 
that I love Thee. Then use honestly your talent for making money, and 
gather wealth not for selfish ends, but for the betterment of your fellow 
men”. ‘Jacob, son of Robert, lovest thou Me? Yea, Lord, Thou knowest 
that I love Thee. Then go out into the streets and lanes of your city, find 
those who do not know Me and tell them of My love and My salvation”. 
“Martha, daughter of Alfred, lovest thou Me? Yea, Lord, Thou knowest 
that I love Thee. Then, make home for your children the most attractive 
place on earth, and so far as possible minister to the sick and cheer the dis- 
consolate in your own neighborhood, remembering that inasmuch as ye do 
it unto even the least of these ye do it unto Me”. Both our usefulness and 
our destiny are determined by the answer that we can truthfully give to our 
risen Lord’s soul-testing question, ‘“‘ Lovest thou Me?” 


* THE TEACHING FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH. 
BY REV. FRANK K. SANDERS, PH. D., D. D., 


PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL HISTORY AND ARCHAOLOGY IN YALE DIVINITY ScHOOL, 


NEw HAVEN, CONN. 


A theme of great interest, but not as novel as many imagine. More 
than 200 years ago our Congregational churches of New England called to 
their service both a pastor and a teacher. It is forced upon our careful 
attention by the far-reaching changes of the past decade or two in methods 
and principles of instruction. While the phrases are overworked, there is a 
new psychology and a new pedagogy to be reckoned with. Each bases its 
advocated principles upon accurate observation of data taken from life. 
They are in a true sense practical. Behind each of them is the historical 
foundation laid today for every subject of human knowledge and, in partic- 
ular, for the study of the Bible. 

Two principles find broad application in the consideration of the theme 
of the teaching function of the church. The first is that no hard and fast 
line can be drawn between religious and secular education. All instruc- 
tion should have a broad religious setting. No pupil should be able 
to distinguish the two kinds of education by any marked difference of atti- 
tude or method. The second is that education is, to borrow Professor 
Coe’s expressive definition, ‘training for self-expression”. Knowing is 
not the only fundamental quality of mind, and knowledge is not the only 
end of education. The older education gave intellectual training a dispro- 
portionate place; it cultivated the memory and logical powers. Hence a 
man might become well-educated religiously without necessarily becoming 
religious. We recognize today the importance of the will. Education is 
the harmonious development of the personality. 

The chief responsibility for religious education today rests with the 
church. Neither the home nor the public school achieves the needed 
results. It is a pastor’s problem, since he is the one person who stands in 

-a working relationship to every contributing factor. Such a pastor must of 
necessity be a trained pastor, acquainted with actual needs, capable of 
critical leadership. It is a problem never actually settled, yet nearer a 
working solution today than ever before. 

The available avenues of religious impression, instruction and training 
are the home, the church and the school. 

The problem of religious education in the home is a serious one. With 
unequalled advantage for fostering a religious consciousness, the natural 


* Abstract of address delivered at the Seventh Conference, held at the Central Congregational 
Church, April 13, 1904. 
380 


THE TEACHING FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH. 381 


opportunities of home life are being yielded or ignored. The grace at 
meals, family prayers, the familiar discussion of religious themes, the com- 
mon study of a weekly lesson in the Bible—all are passing, not so much 
because of indifference or timidity as because of a subtle change in the 
attitude of people to religious obligations. 

The problem of religious education in the church is more complicated. 
All ages, all methods, all objects must be kept in mind: ideals, knowledge, 
habits, artistic impressions. The crying problemfof today is that of the 
Sunday School: its scientific gradation, the distinction of working depart- 
ments, the adoption of effective courses of study, the training of teachers. 
Attention is now being called to the need of a ¢vaimed superintendent, of 
the increase of the time allotted to the Sunday School, of the variation of 
instruction, of the adaptation of courses of study, of the broadening of the 
curriculum, so that it may include, beside the Bible, an opportunity in 
special classes to receive instruction upon missions, church polity, church 
history, the distinguished men and methods of the church, a religious inter- 
pretation of national history and of the life of today. 

The problem of religious education in the school is insistent. In the 
college it is in process of solution. In the private school a start has been 
made. In public schools the principles which must govern the solution of 
the problem are still in debate. Denominationalism and theology may well 
be barred from our public schools, but why religion? To refuse the teacher 
the opportunity of giving simple expression to the common religious needs 
of mankind is deliberately to secularize the growing mind. A simple open- 
ing service and the freedom to interpret religiously the workaday world is 
sufficient and unobjectionable. 

The Religious Education Association has already exhibited such 
strength that there are signs of real promise for the future. An organized 
attempt to study these problems will lead to their thorough discussion and 
rational solution. 


*THE METHOD OF JESUS WITH INDIVIDUALS. 
(St. JOHN 3: 1-16; 4: 5-26.) 
BY REV. Ww. DOUGLAS MACKENZIE, PD. D., 


PRESIDENT OF HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, HARTFORD, CONN. 


None of the Gospels is more carefully planned than the Fourth. And 
in nothing is this care more apparent than in the many contrasts which it 
contains between persons and ideas of different classes. We are now con- 
cerned with one of these most striking comparisons between the treatment 
of Nicodemus, the Pharisee, and of the sinful woman of Samaria by one and 
the same Master and Saviour, Jesus Christ. For nothing seems more clear 
than that in the arrangement of the material it is intended to bring these 
persons into contrast and to display the power of Jesus over both. 

Nicodemus has had the most scholarly training of his day and his 
country. He has lived the self-respecting life of integrity which men would 
expect from one who made his professions and occupied his position. 
There is no reason to suspect that he belonged to the class of Pharisees 
who were hypocrites, but, rather to the class of Pharisees who were sincere 
Puritans, and very earnest, religious men. He belonged to the best kind of 
learned teacher and authoritative ruler in the morally purest society of the 
ancient world; and he came to Jesus, not, perhaps, without a touch of 
condescension in his tone, and yet not without an undercurrent of very 
earnest inquiry, which we feel as the conversation proceeds. 

In the other conversation, we have one who belongs to the lowest 
classes, considered, not in relation to possessions, but to character; one 
who has been accustomed for years to meet the contemptuous gaze of her 
fellow citizens, and who has learned with a brazen face to outface it all; 
one whose name probably was notorious in that little city for the kind of life 
' she had been living, utterly careless of the ordinary standards of self respect 
and honor amongst her fellow citizens. She, to whom religion must seem 
to be a very strange thing, and the claims of the higher life a matter for 
mockery and raillery, rather than for appreciation and interest, she also 
comes in contact with Jesus. 

How does Jesus become the teacher of two people who stand at the 
opposite extremes of moral self-respect, of intellectual education, of social 
position and influence? Can He, does He become the real teacher, the 
inspirer of two hearts so entirely diverse, the one in almost every particular 
the contradiction of the other? Is He able to adapt the eternal truth so 
that it shall take hold of the cold dignity of Nicodemus, and take hold also 


* Delivered at the Sixth Conference, held at the Trinity Union Methodist Episcopal Church, March 9, 
1904. 


382 


THE METHOD OF JESUS WITH INDIVIDUALS. 383 


of the passionate abandonment of the woman of Samaria? Can He so 
reveal God to each of these, that the same God shall make them other than 
they have been? Where shall He insert the sword of the Spirit into the 
linked armor that encases the self-righteous heart of Nicodemus, and how 
shall He touch the open, festering sore of the heart of the woman of Sama- 
ria? How shall one man become the divine Teacher and Saviour of Nico- 
demus and the divine Teacher and Saviour of that woman? Is it possible? 
Is it conceivable? The disciples gradually learned from this Teacher that 
it is possible, and John has here presented to us the way in which this 
Teacher, this Master, this Saviour can let in light into all hearts, can bring 
people from all quarters of the moral universe to the feet of the one God, 
and can flash everlasting truth alike upon the ignorant and dark mind of 
the debased, and upon the dark mind, also, of the most thoroughly trained 
intellectualist of His generation. How is it that He does this? 

1. Observe that when Jesus meets with Nicodemus, He meets with 
one who has come with inquiry concerning Him upon his lips. The first 
words which Nicodemus says to Him are ‘“‘ Rabbi, we know that Thou art 
a Teacher come from God, for no man can do these signs that Thou doest, 
except God be with him”. He belongs to those who have been watching 
Jesus as He lived and worked there in Jerusalem. From that class, as we 
are told in the immediately preceding verse, ‘‘ Many believed on His name, 
beholding the signs which He did”. He belongs to those who watched 
Jesus, alike, when He healed tke sick and when He appeared, solitary, in 
the grandeur of moral indignation, to cleanse the temple courts of all their 
irreligious and immoral foulness, and saw that He proved Himself master of 
every moral situation. And these men, who are all trained to watch the signs 
of the times and who are quick to interpret every deed that He does and 
every word that He speaks, as a religious claim, these men say :—‘‘ Who is 
this and what can He tell us? We listened some time ago to John the Bap- 
tist, and he told us that the Kingdom of God is at hand. Here is One who 
comes after him and carries on his work, not now down at the Jordan, but 
up here at the very heart of Israel’s life. He does not dwell there, dipping 
men in the water. He comes here to wash out the temple courts with His 
own Spirit. He comes here to bless people in the midst of their sorrows, in 
the midst of their sins, in the midst of all their daily life. Who is this and 
what has He to say about the Kingdom of God? When is it coming? Is 
it any nearer, now that He speaks instead of John the Baptist? Has it 
come closer to Jerusalem, closer to us all? Shall our eyes see it? Shall 
our feet bear us into its glorious reality? Shall we behold the kingdom and 
be members of it; we, who live and breathe now, members of the eternal 
Kingdom of Jehovah?” 

These are the questions that are in the heart of Nicodemus, ready to 
pour forth from his lips, one after another, in rapid, eager haste. And 
Jesus, piercing at once to the heart of the situation, answers him and says,— 
‘Verily, verily, the most real thing and the most essential thing I have to 
say to you, Nicodemus, the starting point of all, the thing you must know 


384 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


before I can explain anything else, the thing you must understand and lay 
hod of before I can describe the Kingdom of God and answer any ques- 
tions about it, the first essential thing to know is, that, except a man, except 
you, Nicodemus, be born again, you can not see the Kingdom of God”. It 
was an astounding blow to give Nicodemus, a blow that staggered him; and 
he talked like a little child and stumbled about the meaning of the words 
that Jesus was using,—‘‘ Except a man be born again, he cannot see the 
Kingdom of God”’. 

“ He can not see it’. The Kingdom of God may be all around you and 
you are blind to it. The Kingdom of God might fill the atmosphere with its 
glory and your eyes remain untouched by one ofits rays. The Kingdom of 
God might be sending its thrilling fires into hearts all round you, organizing 
its membership, gathering to itself the kingdoms of the earth, and you, 
you might be deaf to all the praises that were being shouted towards its 
throne, and your heart be impervious to all the influences going out from its 
center of power. You might be living in the very kingdom of heaven itself, 
in earthly presence, and be as far from its actual presence as the farthest 
star from the earth we walk on. That was the doctrine taught by Jesus. 
That was an astounding blow to that man’s religious consciousness at that 
point in his career; but it was the very thing he needed. No farther step 
was possible in understanding Jesus, in approaching the Kingdom of God, 
until Nicodemus’s own heart should deal frankly, deal earnestly, deal suc- 
cessfully with that first condition which Jesus lays down, ‘“‘ Except a man be 
born again, he can not see the Kingdom of God”’,—far less, ‘‘ enter into it”, 
as He says a few verses farther on. 

That is the first thing Jesus teaches him. Then, according to John, 
He goes on to teach him concerning Himself. It is very hard to tell in 
John’s Gospel exactly where history ends and where comment begins, and 
whether the words he writes down are to be understood as words attributed 
by him to Jesus, or words that he draws out of the teaching of Jesus, explain- 
ing and developing it. This passage (from v. 14 to v. 21) illustrates the 

difficulty. These words, I believe were intended to give us the substance 
of the teaching of Jesus, which is this: That Jesus, Himself, is the one 
person with whom Nicodemus must deal, if he would have anything to do 
with that kingdom. He, in fact, tells that man, who is one of the most 
powerful men of his day in the whole country, tells him frankly, ‘“‘ Unless you 
come into right relations with Me, the door is shut, the kingdom is unattain- 
able, invisible. You can not enter into it, you can not see it, until you have 
dealings with the King, who speaks to you”’. 

These, then, are the two main points that Jesus Christ compels Nico- 
demus to consider. The one concerns himself inwardly. The other 
concerns Another and his relation to that Other. The one is that a change 
must come upon his own inner nature, and that change must be wrought by 
God. The other is that he must come into a changed relation with God 
through that Person, outside and above himself, even Jesus Christ. 

Now, there are those, of course, in every age, who feel, as Nicodemus 


THE METHOD OF JESUS WITH INDIVIDUALS. — 385 


must have felt at first,—as the young ruler felt at first, when the same 
demand was made upon him,—that it is an extraordinary and an inadmiss- 
ible assertion that every man, in order to get into heaven, to get into the 
Kingdom of God, must undergo a change so momentous, that it can only be 
described by Jesus Himself, as ‘‘Being born again”. Time after time in 
the history,—not of the world, for the self-satisfied, irreligious worldling 
always denies that,—but in the history of the Christian church itself, move- 
ments have come which have had the denial of this for their mainspring. I 
do not know anything more interesting or more entertaining here than 
certain chapters of Professor Barrett Wendell’s “‘ Literature of America”’. 
Turn to his chapter on intellectualism in New England and the chapter on 
transcendentalism in Boston, especially in relation to literature. Some of 
the freshest and most epigrammatic reading I have found for some time in 
new books, has been found in these chapters. Professor Wendell puts his 
finger upon the real spring of literary and religious life in New England in 
the beginning and in the middle of the last century. Asa matter of fact, 
New Englanders had been living shut up in a corner, away from the main 
currents of history for a number of generations. They were the direct 
descendants of the finest stock that could be, Puritan stock, on its relig- 
ious and moral side. There were not many people that were too rich and 
not many people that were too poor. They were all on somewhat of a social 
equality. They had the advantages of good education, of religious training, 
of quiet and average prosperity in the things of this world, the very con- 
ditions of life that would make for continual satisfaction and peace. The 
result was the development of an average society which was, perhaps, more 
moral than any the world has seen anywhere else. And, therefore, a sort of 
consciousness of excellence arose, out of which they judged even religion 
itself, a consciousness of excellence that led them to turn round upon the 
doctrines of the Puritan fathers, the very doctrines that made them what 
they were, and at last condemn them and pass them by. Professor Wendell 
puts the feeling, the spirit that was wide-spread in New England at that 
time in a number of different paragraphs from which I will take these 
sentences: ‘‘Human nature is good. You are made right. Mind, body, 
soul, spirit are all made right. Obey yourself and you need have no fear. 
All things worth serious and earnest thought transcend human spirit, but a 
trustworthy clue to them is to be found in the unfathomable excellence of 
human minds, souls and spirits ”’. 

Now, this “unfathomable excellence” that some of them were con- 
scious of possessing, not as individuals but as members of a society, was 
something like that “unfathomable excellence” of religious consciousness 
and moral life which Jesus found possessed by large numbers of the Phari- 
sees of His day. And Jesus, to one of the most excellent of these, one of 
the most really excellent individuals among them, comes down with that tre- 
'mendous blow, “ You must be born again”. It is an assertion that goes 
deep into the heart of things; Jesus shows how deep it goes when He says, 
“That which is born of the flesh is flesh” ; the natural flow of life down the 


386 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


race history “is flesh”. ‘That which you would call spirit, spiritual in 
human experience, must come from spirit ; it must come out of the Spirit of 
God Himself’’. 

Religion is not flesh growing up into spirit. Religion is the spirit com- 
ing down into the flesh. Religion is not man scaling the ladder boldly, 
breaking the gates of heaven down and advancing, as Ingersoll said he 
would advance, bravely to the foot of the throne. Religion, the Christian 
religion, is God coming from the throne down the ladder, on which angels 
ascend and descend, coming down to man, taking hold of human nature. 
The Kingdom of God comes to human life as the God of life came to a 
world of mechanical or chemical dust,—from above. The Kingdom of 
God comes and takes hold of human nature, conscious, living, intelligent, 
as intelligence came and took hold of the dull, dead life of the plant world 
—from above. The spirit of the Eternal God, Jesus Christ said, must come, 
if any man would enter that kingdom, to seize that man and lead him in. 
Only that which is of the spirit can be spiritual. 

z. And now, let us look at the opposite. Here there comes to Jesus 
a woman whose moral need is confessed and open. She can not think, like 
Nicodemus, that she is fit for the presence of God, just as she is. Poor 
Nicodemus, with his eyes unopened, thought that as he was he might see 
God, he might enter the kingdom. But poor Nicodemus must be taught by 
Jesus that, until his eyes were opened, he could not see God; until his 
heart was changed, he could not enter the kingdom. But this woman, are 
her eyes opened? Are her feet moving towards that kingdom? Almost 
the last thing she is thinking of is religion, and the very last thing she is 
thinking of is righteousness. She is not there on a religious errand. She 
is not there expectant of a moral blessing. She is there just because she 
has put off and put off coming for water, until she had to do so in the very 
heat of the day. For her slothful, indolent life always ends in inconven- 
ience for herself, and, instead of coming out when others did, she waited, 
either lazy or ashamed, unti] the others had gone back totown. And under 
the burning sun she came out alone, and found another Sunlight at the well. 

When Jesus arouses her curiosity, she expresses her surprise. He 
begins at the root of the matter. He says, “If you had known who was 
speaking to you, you would have asked Him for water and He would have 
given you living water’. She could not understand this saying, of course, 
but Jesus was the most perfect Teacher which the world ever saw. You 
can never have success in teaching until you have personal interest aroused, 
and personal interest involves some measure of curiosity. He arouses, 
therefore, her curiosity and personal interest by the very form of the 
words in which He makes His most wonderful declaration. He says to 
that woman, “I could give you living water”. And still, because she is 
confused among the symbols of things, she tauntingly laughs and says, 
“‘ You have nothing to draw with, and the well is now very deep. How can 
you do that? Are you greater than Jacob, our father?’’ She boasted of 
the antiquity of the well, and the honor of the man who had given it to the 


THE METHOD OF JESUS WITH INDIVIDUALS. — 387 


history of her people for so many hundreds and hundreds of years. Jesus, 
coming a little closer to the matter, says to her that this water which He is 
speaking of is not the kind which she is thinking of, and, therefore, the well 
is not one that can be compared with that of Jacob. ‘ Everyone that drink- 
eth of this water shall thirst again’’,—and oh, how she knows that. How 
she wishes that she and they of her household did not get thirsty so quickly, 
so that she would not have to come out so often to draw this water in the 
heat of the day,—‘‘ but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give 
him shall never thirst, and the water that I shall give him shall become in 
him a well of water, springing up into eternal life”. She does not under- 
stand that, and Jesus knows it. He is still quickening her curiosity and 
leading her on and on. She thinks, “‘ What a strange man is this, talking 
about having a well of water inside oneself, springing up into everlasting 
life? What strange words are these!”’ And yet there is something so 
earnest, so authoritative, in the tone of the Speaker that she presses on to 
ask further questions and to get into the heart of the meaning of this strange 
Jew, who not only speaks to a woman, contrary to all etiquette, but even to a 
Samaritan woman, contrary to all national prejudices. 

When the woman says to Him, with laughter still in her voice, without 
much earnestness, and yet beginning perhaps to be half shy, as if in the 
presence of an Authority she had not expected, ‘‘Give me this water”, 
Jesus deals another astounding blow. ‘Go, call thy husband and come 
hither’. Go and bring him into my presence! And she knows, after a 
few instances more, that He knows more about her than she did herself. 
She has been brought right down from considerations of etiquette and from 
enigmatic words into the heart of the moral universe. Being there she no 
doubt is asking herself now more rapidly than she can speak,— you all know 
how you ask questions in your heart faster than your lips can utter them in 
the intensity of your soul at some great crisis,—she is asking questions that 
never can be uttered, faster, faster, about Him and her, and her past and 
the future, and the kind of woman that stands there, and how she could 
stand before that Face, if that other man was with her. Then when she 
tries to turn the conversation aside to sectarian controversies about worship, 
because she perceived that He was a prophet, Jesus leads her mind up to 
heights unreached by human minds before, in all the history of man’s 
climbing search for God. 

To that poor woman, now feeling forlorn and ashamed, astounded by 
this blow that has come upon her, Jesus speaks of God in phrases sublime 
and of eternal glory. ‘‘God is Spirit”, He says, and from that word to that 
degraded woman light pours upon us all today. He had not said ‘“‘ Father” 
to Nicodemus, but He says “‘ Father’’ to the woman at the well. “Father” 
is the great key-word that He would employ when He speaks to souls like 
hers, to consciences working like that conscience now, in hearts like that 
heart. “The Father”. Oh, what wealth of good tidings flows from that 
name, as it falls from His lips! She never heard it applied to God in all 
her life. She never dreamed that the Everlasting Jehovah, whom Samari- 


388 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


tan and Jew alike worshipped and dreaded, could be named by any individ- 
ual as “Father”. And here, One whom she feels to be a prophet, One 
whom she recognizes as speaking from God, with that instinctive recogni- 
tion of the soul that is surer than anything else, He speaks to her of that 
God, as ‘‘ Father”. He says, ‘‘ The Father does not care whether you pray 
in that mountain there, or whether you pray at Jerusalem, from which I 
come. ‘The Father does not care for place and time. The Father cares for 
spirit and heart and truth. It is a question of whether you kneel down in 
the world of truth, not in the world of matter; whether you kneel down in 
spirit-and in faith, not whether you kneel down in ceremony and in fear 
The question is not whether you kneel down to speak in the language of the 
Samaritan or Jews. The question is whether the words go to Him out of 
your heart, for the Father seeketh the sincere to worship Him”. 

And then, thinking with a new eagerness, but shrinking from the 
immediate demands which God’s Fatherhood at once makes on her, she 
seeks postponement by reference to the Messiah, who will clear up all these 
difficulties for her. ‘There is One coming, some day, who will make it all 
plain; the Jews are expecting Him, the Samaritans are expecting Him; 
and it does not matter whether He comes into Samaria or Jerusalem, He 
will make it all clear; He will solve all doubts”. She can not dispute with 
Him as to whether He is preaching orthodoxy or heterodoxy; she will not 
proceed into these mysteries farther; but she says, “All the same I hope, 
like the rest of my people, for the Messiah. When He conies He will make 
it all plain and then—” “I that speak unto thee am He”’! 

Jesus has disclosed to that woman, more explicitly than to anyone else, 
the great mystery of His person. He isthe Messiah. He is the explainer 
of all things. What He has been saying to her, promising to her, of the 
well of water that He could strike from the rock of her hard heart, hardened 
by a life of sin, He has said because He is the Messiah. He can make the 
water of life spring up even in that heart unto everlasting life. 

Jesus, then, has with this woman proceeded upon the opposite plan 
from that adopted in relation to Nicodemus and reached the same point. 
Nicodemus had not committed gross sins, and, like the young ruler was 
living in the self-satisfaction of what his people would call a clean life; as 
touching the law, blameless, and yet Jesus says that ‘he must be born 
again’. His moral need was deeper than he ever dreamed. With that 
woman, whose moral need was very evident to herself and to all, He takes 
it all for granted. He does not require to prove to her that she needs the 
great change. The change will come to /er when she calls God her Father, 
on the authority of Jesus the Messiah. 

So varied and so sure is the way of Jesus with the souls of men. How 
dare we ask Him to lead any two persons alike, when here, in the Gospel of 
John it is shown. so plainly that He treats people in such opposite ways to 
reach the same result? 

At which end have you been living? At which end does your con- 
science find you this morning? Can you sit here in this church of God and 


THE METHOD OF JESUS WITH INDIVIDUALS. 389 


say,—‘‘I am like Nicodemus. I do not feel that I have committed any great 
crime, that I have any great shame upon my life; and that is one of my 
difficulties about religion”? The message of Christ, I take it, to you and 
to all of sucha classis this: Nevertheless, if you want to enter the Kingdom 
of the Spirit, the Spirit of God must come down upon you, and when that 
Spirit touches your heart the change will be so great that you yourself will 
say, ‘It isa being born again’. Are you ready to face it? Your moral 
need, however good you be, is greater than you know, and when that Spirit 
has touched your heart, He will wake up a sense, even of sin, that you never 
dreamed it possible that you could have. Perhaps there is some one sitting 
here who is conscious of having done great wrong against conscience in 
some direction in the past, the long past or the near past. To you the 
message of Christ is just that which He gave to the woman. Your heart 
can only be cleansed, that open sore have the festering poison washed 
away with living water. There is a spiritual antiseptic for the wounds of 
the heart, and it is given by the Spirit of God. When that comes washing 
through the heart, the horrid abscess is cleansed and the healing is begun. 
Will you all, shall we all, wherever Christ finds us, shall we all unite in 
saying, “‘Good or bad hitherto, at the top or the bottom of the scale, we all 
meet, meet in one great need, meet in one earnest prayer, meet in one living 
trust in God the Father, through Jesus Christ, the Son of God ’’? 


* THE PERSONAL EQUATION OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 
BY REV. FREDERIC PALMER, M. A., 


RECTOR OF CHRIST CHURCH, ANDOVER, MASs. 
(St. JOHN 20:31.) 


“These things are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the 
Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through His name”. 


A brisk discussion took place some years ago as to whether a novel 
should have a purpose. ‘“‘See the inartistic, namby-pamby stuff’’, said the 
one party, ‘‘ which is produced when your novelist tries to advocate tem- 
perance or social reform or some theory about women. He pretends to 
come open-handed, but all the time he is keeping one hand behind him, and 
all the time you can see that he is doing so, and it makes him awkward and 
you disgusted. You demand to have your pill and your sugar separately ”. 
“Well”, says the other party, “the thing, it is true, may be done badly, 
but without a purpose your novel degenerates into a newspaper. You 
merely bind-together some scenes and conversations and call them a story, 
but they are a bundle of sketches with no unity. They are not evena 
chronicle, for that has in it a unifying thread of time. True art will no 
doubt keep a purpose where it is in well-ordered life, not thrusting itself 
forward in long-haired men and short-haired women, but hidden, yet dom- 
inant in every act and word. A novel without a purpose is like a life with- 
out a career. In order to be a story it must have something to say. 
Merely to record facts without pointing out their significance, is to be 
simply a car conductor’s bell-register”’. 

A recent writer in the ‘‘ London Spectator” has been extending this 
view to history. It is impossible, he maintains, for true history to be uncol- 
ored. Take, on the one hand, the historian who aims to show events in the 
bare, cold light of science, and, on the other, one who is so much inter- 
ested in a man or a cause that he follows the leading of this and sees events 
in its light, and you are more likely to learn the real state of affairs through 
the latter than through the former. For in the latter case the historian’s 
“control” as the Spiritualists would say, can be seen, generally plainly seen, 
and its influence allowed for ; while in the former case the historian has not 
sympathy enough with his man or his time to enable his imagination to 
reconstruct its inner life. For it is imagination that must take data and 
rebuild the past. The copying, or even the sifting, of records is not suffi- 
cient. To fill the dry bones of the past with life requires almost as much 
creative power as to shape life out of the duties and events of the present. 


* Delivered at the Fourth Conference, held at Grace Episcopal Church, January 13, 1904. 


390 


THE PERSONAL EQUATION. 391 


Both demand a hold upon ideals and a constant adjustment of facts to them. 
And this necessitates imagination. Imagination has its dangers, its ten- 
dencies to romance and to preaching, but it has its compensations. Like 
oxen, it makes a muss and also wealth. ‘“‘ Where no oxen are, the crib is 
clean ; but much labor is with the strength of the ox”’. 

Such considerations occur to us as we consider the Gospel of St. John, 
especially its differences from the Synoptic Gospels. And in no part of it 
are these differences more apparent than in the chapters from the fifth to 
the eleventh. Compare this section with almost any part of the Gospel of 
St. Mark, for example. The latter is comparatively simple of thought, not 
analytic, not theologic. There is an atmosphere about it that is fresh, 
glad, young. You can see the blue Lake sparkling in the morning sunshine, 
and the golden fields of Galilee, rich with lilies and vocal with birds. It is 
concerned with facts ungarnished, unrelated to any scheme of thought. 
The utterances of Jesus in it are deep and spiritual, but there is in them no 
touch of mysticism ; they say little about His nature, or His relation to man 
or God. 

On the other hand, the tone of the Fourth Gospel is mature, medita- 
tive, mystical. The life it reflects is subtle and complex. It is fuli of the- 
ology. The events it narrates are given apparently not so much for their 
historical value as for a purpose, a purpose of instruction and edification. 
It appears as if aiming to set forth and illustrate a theory. Its gaze is 
dreamy, far-distant, so far that on its horizon the line between earth and 
heaven is indistinguishable. The Synoptic Gospels are full of brief, epi- 
grammatic sayings of Jesus, and of stories of His, illustrating the Kingdom 
of God. The Fourth Gospel, with one possible exception, contains no 
parable, and the discourses of Jesus in it are involved in style, and are 
occupied with setting forth the spiritual relations of men to Him and His 
relations to His Father. The Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel are not 
merely different; they are in some respects contradictory. In the Fourth 
Gospel there is no development in the history of Jesus’ public ministry. 
His Messiahship is at once announced by John the Baptist, recognized by 
the disciples, and exhibited to the multitudes assembled at Jerusalem. On 
the other hand, in the Synoptic Gospels His Messianic character is 
unfolded only gradually. Those who discover it are bidden to keep it con- 
cealed. His closest disciples are slow to recognize it, and it is openly 
announced only at the close of His career. Again, the character of the life 
is different which the followers of Christ will share through their connec- 
tion with Him. In the first three Gospels it is a blessed existence in some 
distant sphere in the future. The present is only preparatory to it, for this 
life will pass away before the Kingdom of Heaven will begin. 

In the Fourth Gospel the reward of the followers of Christ is eternal 
life; and this is conceived not so much as waiting upon a future day asa 

~ matter of here and now, for it consists of union of spirit with Him. The 
Christ of St. Luke places the resurrection and the moral assessment of life 
far distant at the world’s end. St. John makes the Christ repudiate this 


392 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


view, and declare that He is Himself the resurrection and the life, and that 
belief in Him carries life with it immediately. 

Such differences and contrarieties must spring from a difference of 
view in the writers. They must have regarded Jesus differently, and they 
must have had different aims in writing. To examine the aim of each of 
the first three writers is not possible to-day. But in case of the author of 
the Fourth Gospel we cannot but suspect before we reach the end of his 
book that he has a special purpose; and when we reach the last chapter 
but one we find it distinctly stated. ‘These things are written that ye 
might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, 
ye might have life through His name”. His work, then, is not a biography 
of Jesus, not a history of the events of His time; but the author aimed to 
demonstrate that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God, and this not 
so much for intellectual conviction as for spiritual edification. He alone 
speculates on the relation of Jesus to the Almighty Creator. He alone sees 
in Him the representative in human conditions of a side of God’s nature 
which forever existed. The Synoptists exhibit Jesus as preaching the 
truth. The Fourth Evangelist regards Jesus as being Himself the Truth, 
the eternal Thought and Reasonableness of God. It is not merely the case 
with him, as with the others, that following Christ’s precepts will result in 
a life which exemplifies that of Jesus; but with him, Jesus is Life itself, all 
that gives wealth, joy, and worth to existence. Christ is not only an objec- 
tive, historic being who once lived and died, but He is the subjective prin- 
ciple of life within the soul. The First and Third Evangelists give tradi- 
tions of the birth of Jesus, though even they ignore them afterwards and 
sometimes contradict them. The Second Evangelist hears the beginning 
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the voice of John the Baptist. But the 
Fourth Evangelist could have nothing to do with traditions of the birth of 
Jesus, for to him the history of Christ went back through the ages and be- 
gan in the beginning with God. 

When we have apprehended how widely different the portrait of Jesus 
is which is given in the Fourth Gospel from that of the other three, we 
hastily turn and ask, “Is it authentic? How far does it represent the real 
Jesus of Nazareth, or how far was it owing to the peculiarities of the author, 
whoever he was? This special tinge which the Fourth Gospel has through- 
out, is that the artist’s coloring, or is the portrait trustworthy? May we 
assume the historic character of the Gospel?” 

I think we must answer in some’ respects, No. When an author disclaims 
the writing of history, we may not hold him to historic accuracy. He has 
his face set in another direction. Moreover—and this applies to other parts 
of the Bible as well—the conditions of what we know as historic accuracy 
did not then exist. There were no means of making immediate and exact 
reports of conversations or events. When recorded afterwards, it was their 
substance which the writer endeavored to embody, not their form. The 
discourses of historic persons in ancient writings, for example, are rarely 
authentic in form. The author takes certain utterances which may have 


THE PERSONAL EQUATION. 393 


been genuine or certain ideas appropriate to the occasion, and weaves 
from them a speech which he puts into the mouth of the one he is describ- 
ing. This is noticeable in some of the speeches in the Book of the Acts. 
Tertullus, a noted orator, is hired to conduct the case of the Jews against 
Paul. To justify engaging a professional advocate, the speech must have 
been a long one. It takes less than one minute to read it. The part of a 
long and weighty speech which would be apt to be retained would naturally 
_be the opening rather than the after-parts ; and in the Acts the preamble of 
this speech occupies almost half of the whole. Such an instance shows 
that in the Bible, as in other ancient writings, speeches especially were 
freely treated. And this we must bear in mind in considering the speeches 
of Jesus given in the section from the fifth to the eleventh chapters of the 
Fourth Gospel. It adds to the improbability of their stenographic accuracy 
that the style of them is wholly different from the utterances of Jesus as 
given in the other Gospels. The brief, pithy sentences and vital metaphors 
which the earlier Gospels ascribe to Him, all bear one sharp and individual 
stamp ; but these are widely different from the close involutions of argu- 
ment of the Fourth Gospel and the intricacies of metaphysical thought 
underlying them. And what is true of historic data and of style, may be 
also true in some respects of the underlying theology, for it partly is 
conditioned by them. Was this theologic view of Jesus a peculiarity of 
the author, or was Jesus in reality the mystic being here portrayed? 

The evidence to decide this must be largely internal; that is, we must 
take features which seem unquestionably historic and see whether others 
which are asserted harmonize with them. If they do not melt into a unity, 
the presumption is that they were inaccurately reported or come from the 
peculiarities of the author. 

In our judgment of the authenticity of the portrait of Jesus given in the 
Fourth Gospel, we shall consider whether its special features are harmo- 
nious with the best type found elsewhere. 

Now there is another source of information with regard to Jesus besides 
the Gospels. Half a century at least before the writing of the Fourth Gos- 
pel, and a quarter-century or so before the earliest of any of our four, St. 
Paul began sending epistles to his distant friends. He made no attempt to 
describe the events of the life of Jesus, for he was but little interested in 
them; but Jesus’ character impressed him profoundly. Now it is most 
significant that with him, too, as well as with the author of the Fourth 
Gospel, it is the subjective, spiritual side of Christ with which he is mainly 
concerned; it is Christ’s part in the great world-process of union between 
God and man. Hecontemplates Jesus as embodying the human side of 
God and the divine side of man. “Christ” with him has passed from a 
title of Jesus of Nazareth to a designation of the ideal man, the consumma- 
tion of all that is best in the world, the typical instance of the possibilities 
of the soul and of the human race. He is the spiritual expression of 
humanity. He is the complete embodiment of God under human condi- 
tions. At one time St Paul refers to Jesus as a historic person who 


394 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


lived and died at Jerusalem. At another time Christ is a spiritual being, 
but external to the soul, the giver of all its true life. Again He is within 
the soul, its very life and essence. From one to another of these great 
conceptions he hurries, as it is now this, now that aspect which attracts his 
attention at the time. They tangle his thought into inextricable sentences. 
The mystery of the mingling of human and divine in the soul of the indi- 
vidual and in the race so overcomes him that he bursts out into poetry and 
a torrent of prepositions: ‘‘ For of Him, and through Him, and to Hims 
are all things; to whom be glory forever. Amen”. 

The similarity of these two conceptions, of course, suggests the question 
whether the later was borrowed from the earlier. But this is a question of 
little importance. Whether the Fourth Evangelist came across this view 
in his travels among those churches of Asia which St. Paul had founded; 
whether it was struck out in his conflict with Gnostic speculation as the 
only method of reconciling the infinity of God with the finiteness and evil 
of the world; or whether it came to him after long years of quiet meditation 
as the necessary development of certain germs of character he had seen or 
learned of in Jesus of Nazareth; this is of secondary importance. The 
chief thing is that he deliberately adopted it, endorsed it, and made it the 
basis of his portrait of his Master. 

Portrait—that is the word we must keep in mind in considering this 
Gospel. It is not a photograph of Jesus. How doa portrait and a photo- 
graph differ? The one gives the fact of the moment and from one point of 
view. Place yourself at the camera and put your sitter in a given position, 
and this photograph is precisely what you see. It is the scientifically 
correct record of these particular conditions. But as a complete report of 
the man it may be gravely inaccurate. ‘‘ He never takes well’, we say of 
this or that person, ‘‘ his face has so much expression”. Where a subject 
is complex, the photograph, by recording only one aspect, may convey an 
absolutely false impression. But the portrait-painter endeavors to show the 
full, the real man. The greatness of a Rembrandt or a Watts portrait does 
not lie in the fact that it tells us of what color the subject’s eyes were or 
‘what kind of a coat he wore. We care very little whether the artist was 
historically accurate in these details or not. But we stand in amazement at 
seeing a human soul gazing at us from the canvas—a soul calm or frivolous, 
humorous, vain, or profound. It is the man himself that we see; not his 
clothes, not his appearance at one time or under special circumstances, but 
the composite, complete man. Before the artist can create his likeness he 
must create Aim. The sitter presents himself before the artist’s judgment- 
seat and the artist gives sentence upon him with every stroke of his brush. 
‘““Your character is thus and so. You area coward here, a hero there. 
Thus I strip off all accidentals of time and circumstances, and behold, your 
real self stands revealed”. It must require much confidence to have one’s 
portrait painted by a great artist. 

It is such a likeness of Christ that the Fourth Gospel gives us. St. 
Mark, with his loving eye for details, records this and that circumstance 


THE PERSONAL EQUATION. 395 


which we welcome as furnishing the fact-basis for our conception of our 
Lord. And then comes St. John; and upon this background he paints so 
wonderfully that we behold the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
beaming forth in the face of Jesus Christ. It is a presumption in behalf of 
the accuracy of His portrait that it is not a summary of facts, but it is the 
impression which Christ made asa whole upon an artist of constructive 
imagination and profound spiritual insight. The greatness of the character 
thus revealed, is, it is true, not of itself a proof of its historic accuracy. 
Moving as it is, it might yet be no revelation of the historic Jesus, but a 
product merely of the writer’s lofty imagination. But when we see that the 
figure it presents is the Jesus of the Synoptists, raised to a higher degree of 
spiritual development; when we see this conception buttressed by the first 
Epistle of St. John and the later Epistles of St. Paul; then we feel we have 
a right to reckon as evidence for its accuracy its mastery over our souls and 
its call upon our worship; then we exclaim, ‘‘ My Lord must have been noth- 
ing less than that”. We recognize that the author has attained his purpose. 
“These things”’, he said, ‘“‘are written that ye might believe that Jesus is 
the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, ye might have life through 
His name”. Life comes to us through the name he has written large. 

See it there--his conception—the Incarnation—opening to its wealth 
of meaning in the Fourth Gospel. If we had possessed no more than the 
first three Gospels, we should have had a wonderful Christ, an example and 
an inspiration. But He would have been a historic being only; we should 
have had no warrant for identifying Him with the divine life of our souls, 
dwelling with us and abiding in us. But the Christ of the Fourth Gospel is 
the connecting link between the outward and the inward, between the 
historic and the spiritual. He is the representative in bodily conditions, in 
terms of time and space, of that human side which existed forever in the 
nature of God. The life of Jesus was in time; but the divine sonship, the 
existence in God of a human side, was independent of time and humanity, 
being eternal. This was authentically exhibited in Jesus of Nazareth. Not 
that He is Himself the Almighty, for neither in this Gospel nor elsewhere 
in the New Testament is it asserted as a theological proposition that Jesus 
is God. But He is the representative of God. If God had lived, a man on 
earth, He would have done just as Jesus did. He showed thought and love 
and goodness as existing forever in the bosom of the Father, and constitut- 
ing in Him the ground of connection with humanity. And, on the other 
hand, He showed this same goodness and thought and love as the true 
nature of men, and constituting in them the ground of union with God. He 
brought God down to men, and raised men up to God. And as Heis God’s 
representative, so whatsoever things in the world are true, pure, just, lovely, 
these are His representatives. In Him is life, and the life is the light of 
men. The soul of the world, all the calls to noble desire, all that makes life 

- worth living, this is the presence of the Spirit of Christ. It is such a con- 
ception of Jesus as this that is the characteristic gift to us of the Fourth 
Gospel. 


396 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


The question is sometimes asked, ‘‘ How do we know that Jesus will 
not be superseded in that unique position which the Gospel of John assigns 
Him, just as He Himself superseded the prophets which were before Him?” 
Or, to put it in spiritual language, ‘“‘ How do we know that He is God’s only 
Son?” Certainly He is not such in the sense that God has no other sons; 
for we too are sons of God as really as was Jesus. But certainly He is, in 
the sense that His revelation of God is unique and final. However this may 
be further developed—and St. Paul points out how one may “fill up the 
measure of the sufferings of Christ ””—He cannot be superseded. Develop- 
ment must consist in applying in new departments this same idea of God 
which Christ set forth. This renewal of the Incarnation is the Christian’s 
path in every age for following his Master. And in every noble man or 
woman we have known we see a partial incarnation of Christ. But its funda- 
mental lines cannot be changed. For the united Christian consciousness, 
perhaps one may say, the consciousness of the whole world, asserts that 
Christ’s conception of God is the deepest, the highest, the truest, and there- 
fore the ultimate conception. There are some things in which finality has 
been reached. Goodness will undoubtedly show itself differently under 
different conditions; but our idea of the nature of goodness can never be 
reversed. SoChrist’s conception of God may be amplified, but it can never 
be altered. It is final. He is the only-begotten Son of the Father. 

Belief in God depends more upon moral than intellectual grounds. It 
is founded upon the insistence of the soul that the highest intellectual and 
moral ideal shall be real. The cogency of this demand will therefore be in 
proportion to the urgency with which the moral pressure is felt. So belief 
in the authenticity of St. John’s conception of Christ will depend largely 
upon whether such a conception is demanded by one’s spiritual nature. To 
some the figure which appears in the Synoptists may be a sufficient explana- 
tion of the person of Christ and of the way of their own approach to God; 
for, whatever view is taken, these are inevitably bound together. Others, 
to whom it seems that there must of necessity have been a human side in 
God from all eternity, that this must of necessity have become at some time 
embodied as completely as is possible under human conditions, that this 
ideal must stand in vital connection with the life of their own souls today— 
such will recognize in the portrait of Christ, drawn by the author of the 
Fourth Gospel with the purpose of presenting to the soul its master, features 
intrinsically probable as those of the historic Jesus of Nazareth, and essen- 
tial to the Saviour of the world. 


*THE AUTHOR OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 
BY REV. CLARK S. BEARDSLEE, D. D., 


PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL DOGMATICS AND ETHICS, HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL 


SEMINARY, HARTFORD, CONN. 


Many remarks, in apology and explanation, call for utterance as I take 
up this much-contended theme. But for these there is now no time or 
room. You good people will appreciate what such remarks should be, and 
when they would be in place. 

This one thing needs, however, to be said, and I hope it will offend no 

one. Itis not going to be my primary purpose to name the author of this 
Gospel, or to tell where he lived, or to intimate his ancestry or training. 
- Rather, I am going to seek to gain some knowledge about this author 
by studying his work. This Fourth Gospel is some man’s monument. It 
must of necessity embody some evidences and disclosures of his personal 
qualities. In some true sense the author’s portrait must be outlined in his 
work. His heart must be beating there, if only our fingers are deft enough 
to find its pulse. His eye must be glowing there continually, if only our 
sight is keen enough to catch its light. His immortal being must leave 
traces through his wonderful work, if only our immortal spirits have the 
requisite affinity for sharing in his fellowship. Somewhere within this 
Fourth Gospel the man who gave it shape stands beckoning toward our eye. 
As we read these chapters, the very presence and person of their original 
penman stand nearer than we think. And we may cherish the precious 
confidence that main plain outlines of his noble form can never be effaced. 
Where this Gospel stands, its author may be seen immediately. 

Here open grand suggestions. At best, all that can be said here will 
have to be mere suggestion. 

In the first place, people are always saying that this Fourth Gospel is 
so unlike the other three. True. And precisely here this author comes to 
view. He is unlike those other men. He seems to have had his attention 
fastened upon a special round of facts in the Master’s life. And this prone- 
ness of his toward just these things, if only we con it well, is deep and clear 
with meaning. Those other men were mainly held by scenes in Galilee. 
This man was mainly held by scenes in Judah. Here is a dominant note. 
And in this dominant note ring echoes of the very voice of him who brings 
this closing testimony to our ears. 

And for one feature of our author it shows that he was se/ective. He 
omitted hosts of facts. He chose with carefulness, just these few. Ponder 
that remark of his in 20:30, 31: “Many other signs did Jesus * * * 


* Delivered at the Eighth Conference, held at All Saints Memorial Church, May 11, 1904. 


397 


308 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


But /Hese are written, etc’’. Selection. Definite selection. Resolute selec- 
tion. There rings a purpose, a thoughtful purpose. This yields no hint of 
the author’s name, to be sure. But it introduces us intimately to his inner 
mind. He is no easy rover. He prattles no distracted and distracting 
speech. He can pick and weigh and lock together and concentrate what 
he treats and what he says. Think of this. It shows a master instantly. 

Then see his motive: ‘‘ These are written that ye may believe”. That 
ye may believe. faith. Walk around that word. Dig under it. Look 
within it. Trace it to its origin. Who said that? Here is a man who aims 
to engender faith. That means truth. And truth that stands clear, and 
rests firm. There looms a sublime proposition. It is an appeal to man’s 
intelligence. It is girt with mighty confidence. It is strong with an unvary- 
ing patience. Think into it. There rings a sovereign. No finer, kinglier 
challenge could be made by any man. The man who poised these two 
verses on the apex of his work was a master-builder. Keep thinking of 
this. ‘‘ That ye may believe”. The man who utters that brief phrase, as 
it is uttered by this author, needs to hold a steady footing, needs to haye 
his vision clear, his conviction sure, and the parts of his total theme well 
arranged, as he voices a challenge like that. No outburst of his being 
could be more dignified, no undertaking could require a grander momen- 
tum, no proposition could show a finer personal character, or attest a loftier 
ambition. 

Read those two verses over and over. More features of the author are 
resting there than you suspect. Feel the throbbing of his heart as he men- 
tions “Jesus”. See whither his fancy soars as he writes down “ Christ”’. 
Follow up the far rangings of his thought as he carves that phrase, ‘“‘ The 
Son of God”. Get the posture and energy of this man as he bows down 
over his great endeavor and writes: ‘These things I have set down in 
writing that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and 
that believing ye may have life in Hisname”. Set every phrase apart. 
Scan every word. Then combine the whole. Press into this. You are 
drawing near the warm presence of the very man you seek. 

Then put close beside these verses those verses with which the Gospel 
opens. Explore the grand interior of that word ‘‘ Word”. There shines a 
precious stone. None finer was ever found in all the Orient. The “Word”, 
2. é., the very voice of reason, and the very light of revelation. Will you 
properly inspect those terms? Then hear that declaration about the 
“Word”: It “was in the beginning”. This reasoned revelation, this 
revealed reason is eternal. What an affirmation! So examine the spaces 
and masses which bulk and spread so marvelously in that Prologue. The 
man who penned that Prologue was a man of vision and a man of thought. 
He had seen, and he had pondered. It was a master who framed those 
ponderous words together. There is in that Prologue a resumé of the 
earthly life of Christ, a deep reach into His eternity, an outline of an ulti- 
mate metaphysics, a true philosophy, a thumbnail compend of theology, 
and an ample base for perfect ethics. These are superlative affirmations, 


THE AUTHOR OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 399 


and only affirmations, to be sure. Time fails to show their warrant. But 
test them. Work them out. And again you will begin to be finely aware 
of the very presence of the man who penned this Gospel. 

Then meditate for a little upon the phrase, ‘‘ Without Him was not 
anything made that was made”. Stop right here. What ever moved this 
author to coin this claim? Think of this. Here is another disclosure of 
himself. He was a watchful, thoughtful man. He was a man of vision and 
reason. For example: He saw Jesus turn the water into wine. He saw 
Jesus feed the 5,000 men. Just such scenes as these were seen by all the 
other men. But this man pondered as he gazed. He thought. And as he 
pondered, he was led to see and say, ‘‘ Lo, here is the Creator”’. 

Study in a similar way that other phrase: “I am the light of the 
world”. Or this: “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men”’. 
How did that idea and figure of “ight get so firma place in this Fourth 
Gospel? It is another mark and impress of its author. He saw Jesus deal 
with men. He heard Him talk. He saw violence fly against Him, and 
observed the Master’s plain and strong and mild replies. And as he saw 
he thought. And ashe thought he said: “Lo, here is reason streaming 
into human minds. Here is original and ultimate instruction. Here is the 
light that lighteth every man coming into the world”. Do yousee? The 
man who penned those words was a closely watchful, deeply thoughtful, 
finely docile, truly original mind. Suppose it be allowed that man cannot 
be sure about his name or nature, place or training or daily whereabouts. 
Despite all that ignorance, we may know this man. He lives and speaks 
right before our eyes. 

And I would say that these last mentioned instances are characteristic 
of this Gospel and this man. The other Gospels record similar deeds of 
Christ. But they do nothing more. But this man, who pens this fourth 
account, takes from those common actions a chosen few, and thinks of 
them, and grows into them, and gets the weight of them, and sees their size, 
and penetrates to their philosophy. He peers and ponders till he sees them 
whole, till he finds their meaning, till he stands within eternity. Such was 
the man who wrote this Gospel. 

Another introduction to this author can be gained by noting all he says 
about the Holy Spirit. In this regard he stands grandly unique. Once 
Jesus said: ‘If any thirst, let him come unto Me and drink, and out of his 
belly shall flow rivers of living water”. The author of this Gospel caught 
that great saying and wrote it down. And he knew well what he was doing. 
And then he got another saying,—that one, uttered when Thomas was absent; 
where Jesus breathed on them and said: “Receive ye the Holy Ghost”’. 
The author of this Gospel watched that little drama through and made a 
record of it. And in those wonderful conferences of Jesus and His friends 
in chapters 14-16, he has put down repeatedly at the sharp point of his 
accurate pen the Lord’s allusions to the Spirit. Mind this. This author 
made a note of all of them and put them in his book. Read them over and 
over if vou really seek to know this man. Forhere is precious aid, I feel 


eas 


400 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


sure. The author of this Fourth Gospel had deep conceptions of what 
Jesus meant and did when He promised and imparted the Holy Ghost. The 
mighty energies of that infinite Holy Spirit of wisdom and grace and conso- 
lation wrought freely and for long upon his plastic nature, he freely sub- 
mitting all the while to the silent transformation, until its fruitage ripened 
in this golden record which we read. Through that inworking Spirit, all the 
Master’s word and life were inwrought into this author’s being. And this 
Gospel is the living issue. The Gospel unfolds the author just as truly as 
it unfolds the Christ. And I will put in right here that, if I know at all what 
Christ’s Gospel actually is, it is in this Fourth Gospel. And it is all here. 
And in its record is the very soul of the Christian honor of its author. To 
the very core it is genuine, authentic, true. The penman of these para- 
graphs was inspired. The Holy Spirit, the boon of Christ, reigned within 
his life and work. He drank deep draughts from the spring of life, and 
hence he wrote this Gospel. 

Another sign of who and what he is appears in that same scene when 
Thomas was away. Read it through and get the drift of that statement of 
the Lord: ‘As the Father hath sent Me, so doI send you”. There is 
apostleship. Tarry here till you get the force and outlook of that word. 
Then test this Gospel by that thought. Read also this: ‘“ You have not 
chosen Me, but I have chosen you, etc.”. The man who wrote this book 
was a man who felt that mission. His impulse hailed from Christ and God, 
and it aimed at all humanity. If ever an apostle of Christ has been seen by 
men, he is the author of this book. This is really a taking clue to his 
identity. And it runs all through this Fourth Gospel, if there is any honor 
in it. 

Now study the relation of events and discourses in this Gospel. 
Remember the events—those miracles, those criticisms and challenges—and 
then remember the addresses that follow. For example take chapters 5 and 
6. Here is aphenomenon of which much is being made. Study this. Men 
say the discourses wander and get lost in unearthly metaphysics. But look. 

.See how simple those discourses are. They are profound, indeed. Yes. 
But they are simple. And they do grow out of the event. They really do. 
They are expository of the inner meaning of the event. They are comments, 
a master’s comments. Examine this. You are as capable of doing this as 
anyone. You search and see. The fact is, event and discourse cohere. 
One produces the other. One rises from the other, simply, naturally. 

What does this mean touching the author? Why, it means that in the 
writer of this Gospel, we have a man who hung about Christ with an 
exquisite insight and attentiveness, and that he was peculiarly prone to be 
close by the Lord when He was drawing eternal meanings out of common 
things. Here is a disciple who saw the Saviour’s philosophy of things. 

Test this by an honest study of the word “Son” in 5:19, and “love” 
in 5:20, and “ bread” in 6:33. Test it in that ninth chapter. Study into 
these suggestions. Jesus did deep thinking all along there. Follow it if 
youcan. Keep your hold of theevent. Traverse through its discourse and 


THE AUTHOR OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 401 


you will find a marvelous characteristic of thisauthor. He can take an item 
that is in itself an incident, such as the evangelists would merely name, and 
show how Jesus’ mind adjusted itself to that item’s deepest bearings. 

Now John is full of this sort of thing. Do not refuse to study it out. 
Get into his simplicity. Get into his profundity. The fact is, this writer 
stands at once the friend and the follower, the peer and the leader of the 
plainest and the most finished men of our race. He may be classed, and 
properly classed among the stoics and the gnostics, the artists and the 
rustics of the ages. Wonderfully plain, wonderfully deep. I praise heaven 
that there was one who had the eye to see the Messiah’s discernment of the 
mighty meanings in common things. 

One could well spend a whole afternoon verifying this. I have alluded 
to that impotent man in Johns. ‘There is a cure just such as you find in 
the other Gospels without a comment. Its Sabbath desecration, too, is simi- 
lar to repeated synoptic scenes. There is an independent, authoritative act 
of love. Now see how deep thoughts unfold. Out of the cure, an allusion 
to the Sabbath. Out of that, an allusion to the Father. Out of that, some 
words about the Son. Out of that, some words about Love. Out of that, 
some words about Life and Judgment. Out of that, some words about 
Faith, and so on. Now think; whither have you run? From that poor, 
impotent man by the pool, you have almost instantly traversed infinite 
realms, until at the end you stand face to face with the ultimate realities of 
personal being in God and man alike. Here is a sublime and impressive 
trait of the author of this work. 

Another study worth the while of any man is the search to see how 
many sides, how many different sides of the Master this author has defined. 
It is a most wonderful study. But there is no room for its examination here. 

Still another phase of this Gospel, reflecting finely on the author’s 
qualities, is its quality as a piece of literature. There is high art here, art 
of the finest type,—literary art. Lookatit asa drama. Study its personnel. 
Study its scenery. Study it asatragedy. Mark its unity. 

Then try to grasp the whole as a unified portrait of Christ. You know 
it is possibly this same author that drew that picture of Christ in the closing 
book of our canon. That picture shows rapt vision and deep meditation, 
and you have the substance of it all in this book. 

Then conceive the whole Gospel as a composition of fine music, a 
symphony. Get its sweet, appealing, persuasive melodies; get its dreadful 
discords. Move out into the swing of its triumphant harmonies. It is a 
majestic work in range and balancing. 

And now try to make some clear description of this man—the author of 
this book. 

He must have had a deep and limpid eye. He must have had a master 
intellect. He must have had a mighty heart. He must have had the 
_ sobriety and poise of a philosopher. He must have had a fine sincerity. 
His mind must have been as spacious and pure as the vault of heaven. 
You may hear him in his music, for it will never grow mute. You may see 


402 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


him in his portrait of his Lord, for there are tracings of himself that will 
never fade. 

Do you ask who he was? Well he must have been one who nestled 
near to his Lord; I think he must have leaned upon His breast. He must 
have imbibed his Master’s warmest affections; I think he might be termed 
the beloved. He did absorb great draughts of his Master’s teachings; truly 
he was a disciple. He did follow and obey the Master’s impulse to go and 
tell what he had seen and heard; I think he was an apostle. And he must 
have pondered these things many a long year; I think he was an aged 
follower when he wrote. And if you ask his name, I must reply that most 
fittingly it would be woven out of two Hebrew words—Grace and Jehovah— 
Jehovah’s grace. Johannes, in the Greek; in the English, John. 

Such is the author of this Fourth Gospel. A free soul, of a regal pur- 
pose, sincere, mature, refined, profound, artistic, spiritual, an apostle, a 
disciple, a beloved friend, an exponent of Jehovah’s love,—John. 


TOMAR MS Ay THE Gis eS Le 
VASTIARY F3, i FO, 


ee APPENDIX 








*REMARKS AT THE BUSINESS MEN’S LUNCH, 
JANUARY 13, 1904. 


MR. LITTLEFIELD. ‘‘ GenrLemen :—I think that business men honestly 
and sincerely desire to know the truth, so far as my experience goes. I am 
reminded in that connection of a little church in Western New York that had for 
its principal supporter a David Harum. A new minister was called to the church 
and in his first sermon he preached pretty vigorously against certain evils, and the 
good deacons became alarmed and feared that Brother Harum, who was not a 
member of the church but a large contributor to its financial support, might be 
very much offended and withhold his aid. And so they told the pastor the circum- 
stances. Soon after the pastor met David on the street and he took occasion to say 
to him that he certainly had no reference to him in his sermon. ‘ That is all right, 
Parson’, said he, ‘it is a mighty poor sermon that don’t hit me pretty hard some- 
where. Go ahead and preach what you believe to be the truth and I shall be satis- 
fied’. I think that is the attitude of business men generally toward the truth. 
They desire to have thoughtful and free expression of it. 

“* Now we are very fortunate to have with us today a number of men who have 
devoted their lives to the study of theological questions. They are what we lawyers 
call experts in their line; and one of these gentlemen will address us on the sub- 
ject of the ‘Indebtedness of the Churches to the Conference Speakers’. I need not 
say that this is an indebtedness that cannot be discharged in dollars and cents; an 
indebtedness far deeper and broader than pecuniary indebtedness is involved here, 
and I am sure we all recognize it. But I wish to take occasion now to express 
my thanks to the gentlemen present and absent who have so generously and freely 
given their financial assistance and made it possible for us to enjoy this lunch and 
these Conferences. 

““TIt gives me great pleasure to present at this time Rev. Dr. Carter E. Cate, 
Chairman of the Conference Committee”. 


DR. CATE. 

‘*Mr. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW CITIZENS :—I am sure we all feel that it isa 
very great distinction for Providence to have these successful Conferences held 
here; and we feel that we are privileged in this above most cities. We are making 
these Conferences a focusing point for the best thought and the deepest experiences 
of the leaders of New England and beyond. AndI am sure it would be unfort- 
unate, if some one did not express better than I am expressing, our deep and sin- 
cere appreciation. And I refer to the gentlemen who have come to us today as 
well as those who have addressed us in the past Conferences. We have been very 
fortunate in the readiness with which the speakers have followed along 
the distinctive ideas of these Conferences; the idea of constructive work, the idea 
of interpretation. They have lifted up the whole truth ina very clear manner. 


* A very pleasant feature of the January Conference was the Business Men’s Lunch, held at the 
Trocadero between the morning and afternoon sessions. Several of the Conference speakers were in 
attendance and made brief addresses. Hon. Nathan W., Littlefield presided. About 150 of the business 
and professional men of the city were present. The occasion was greatly enjoyed. 


405 


406 THE GOSPEL OF ST.JOHN. 


They have made the Conferences immensely inspiring and helpful to us. We only 
regret that we have not been able to reach a larger audience. We must circulate 
the reports, put them into the hands of the people, and by inviting and urging 
the young men and women of our churches, make a special effort to bring them 
under the inspiration and help of these Conferences. They combine all the quali- 
ties that ought to command the respect and interest of the young men and 
women in our churches—scholarship, personal character, culture, all these qual- 
ities are there which taken together make them unusually inspiring and uplift- 
ing”. 


MR. LITTLEFIELD.—‘ The criticism used to be made on the religious 
schools and seminaries of our country that they turned out men who were deep in 
the knowledge of books and literature, but did not have a knowledge of men and of 
life. I think that criticism has ceased to be applicable to the work of the sem- 
inaries of our day, and in many ways I think a great deal has been done to 
bring the student into touch with real life. One of the best seminaries today is the 
Hartford Theological Seminary, and we shall now have the pleasure of listening 
to one of its Professors on ‘The Service of the Seminaries to the Churches’. I 
take great pleasure in presenting Professor Jacobus”. 


PROFESSOR JACOBUS. 


‘*Mr. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW CITIZENS :—I have sometimes been asked the 
relation of the seminary to the churches, and I have never failed to answer that 
question by saying that the relation of the seminary to the churches is the relation 
of the seminaries to their students, because it is manifestly impossible that an insti- 
tution should be established to prepare men for the ministry which would not 
measure its relationship to that ministry by its relationship to the affairs of the 
church. Times have changed in these last twenty-five years. I imagine as long 
ago as that Hartford Seminary would have been considered an ultra-conservative 
institution; and there are some who consider it such today, and some who con- 
sider it ultra-liberal. Iam glad to say that it does not stand upon either a con- 
servative ora radical basis. It stands upon a basis for which it was chosen, the 
work of a constructive thinking, a thinking which brings a man face to face with 
the truth, and directs him in the best way of seeing both sides of it, and then 
trusts him to his manhood to find his way out. There are a great many of our men 
.. who do not find their way out as we wish they would, but there are many who do. 
But we have the inestimable self-satisfaction of saying with reference to every man 
who goes out, ‘ He is what he has made himself, and not what we have straight- 
jacketed him to be’. 

‘““We have kept out of controversy because we have held that Christ has 
entrusted us to train these men to know His truth through knowing Him, and 
through knowing Christ to bring His truth to the hearts of men; so that the 
relationship of Hartford Seminary to its students lies in this one great ambition 
and desire, that she shall so impress her students that in that impression she 
shall impress upon them Jesus Christ. Manifestly, gentlemen, that is not possible 
unless there be impressed upon us who sit in the Professors’ chairs the spirit of 
Christ. And I stand before you with a consciousness born of the humility of 
experience when I say that the yearning desire of those who sit around the faculty 
table at Hartford is that Christ shall be so impressed upon us that our impres- 
sion upon our students can be nothing less than the impress of Him. That is 
the relationship and the service of the seminary to the church”. 


REMARKS AT THE BUSINESS MEN’S LUNCH. 407 


MR. LITTLEFIELD.—“ Quite a number of years ago, so many years ago 
that I will not tell you how many lest it might appear that the gentleman upon 
whom Iam about to call has passed what has been termed the dead-line of fifty, 
there was a young man in Phillips Andover Academy in the best class that ever 
went out from that academy, who is present here today as a speaker. It was the 
best class because Mr. Palmer and myself happened to be members of that class. I 
now take great pleasure in presenting to this body of business men my friend and 
classmate, Rev. Frederic Palmer, who will speak upon ‘ Church Unity’”. 


MR. PALMER. 


**Mr. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN :—Your president has introduced me to 
speak upon ‘Church Unity’. And in introducing my brief remarks I would like 
to ask what does one want more than to look upon this assembly, for a living pic- 
ture creates a greater impression than a picture of words. I can say nothing more 
impressive than to ask you to look around you. Every one of us is heartily loyal 
to his own church, and yet coming here we find a union that is underlying the dif- 
ferences of the outside. It seems to me that these Conferences are a very remark- 
able indication of the way in which the unity of the church is being worked out. 
This is a kind of guage which tells us the point that unity has reached. It tells us 
also what we have not reached. The old idea was that of uniformity, but that was 
amistake. For the moment you try to impress uniformity upon men, that moment 
you increase the difficulty of the problem. Whatever church unity may be it is not 
uniformity. 

“‘T think we have also come to the conclusion that uniformity is not desirable, 
because we are all seeing that beneath our differences there is a response to certain 
inherent and necessary differences in human nature. Iam glad to think that there 
is a Roman Catholic Church near mine that is full every Sunday morning. I do 
not desire to see it closed; if it was closed, I do not think its members would come 
to my church, or to any of the other churches. It is ministering something to that 
congregation, and we each are ministering to something in human nature; one, it 
may be, to the social side, another to the spiritual, and another to the intellectual 
side of human nature, but each making its contribution. What we are coming to 
hope is that we may get the religious ideas of each one of these churches and pre- 
sent them to the community as a whole. At a meeting in Boston one of the speak- 
ers said, ‘If you could get Methodist fire under Baptist water, you could get enough 
steam to run all the Presbyterian machinery throughout the United States’. 

*‘T think we are recognizing that we have a great degree of common unity at 
present. I wish the unreality of many of our differences was not so much over- 
looked. We do business together, we play golf together, and on the great and 
serious matters of life we come together and unite with each other; but when we 
enter the door of the church there is some strange difference there that we do not 
recognize anywhere else. This is conventional; we are doing it from past example, 
and are allowing it to rob us of a great good. When a person can jest about a sub- 
ject, that shows that it is not fundamental with him. When Phillips Brooks was 
rector of Trinity Church he asked Professor Park to come and visit him. He 
wrote that he could not come, for, as he said, ‘I have just learned from an Episco- 
pal clergyman that I have not been properly baptized’. ‘Come’, Dr. Brooks wrote 
in reply, ‘I have a little room in a remote part of the house which I keep for just 
such cases’. When men can talk of their differences in that way, you may be sure 
they are not real. In one of the little towns out west some years ago, a new clergy- 
man had gone in there who was a ritualist, and after a short time he was introduced 


408 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


to the Methodist minister, an aged, saintly man. In the course of the conversa- 
tion the young clergyman said, ‘ Of course I recognize you as a gentleman, though 
[cannot regard you asa clergyman’. And the other replied, ‘Of course I recog- 
nize you as aclergyman, though I cannot regard you asa gentleman’. What is 
the difference between those two incidents, the one between Professor Park and 
Phillips Brooks; the other between the ritualistic clergyman and the old saint? 
There is a difference as wide as heaven is from earth. The difference between 
the first two men was but slight, but the difference between the other two was 
wide. The difference is one of spirit, the different spirit of the men, and that is 
the thing which constitutes the difference between churches. It is not so much 
ecclesiastical difference as a difference of spirit that divides men. Now, wherever 
we can recognize a common spirit, there we have unity; and that is where we have 
been making the greatest advances during the last few years. It is not so much 
that you can call men by the same name and they will be all of a kind, as that the 
men of one spirit in a given church are like the men in the other churches of the 
same spirit. It is the spirit that makes the difference, and that is the important 
element here. It is not a man’s profession in the church which he belongs to; it 
is, Is he filled with the spirit of Christ? That is what is important and funda- 
mental. So of any church. The question is not primarily of the validity of its 
orders; it is, Does this church bring men to Christ and fill them with His spirit ? 
Recognizing this as fundamental, we can look upon the members of our churches 
and yet recognize the something deeper and higher than their church membership. 

** Now, you here in Providence are taking the second step in Christian unity. 
{t is impossible that we should ever come together on the ground of external unity, 
—any one form of worship, or any one organization, or any onecreed. That is 
impossible, and it is undesirable that it should be so. But we are uniting on 
matters of practical work; on that basis we are coming together. This is so in my 
own town. Together we are seeing that temperance legislation is carried out, and 
the charity of the town taken care of. Our town is being cared for as if it were one 
parish. We have been taking the first step; you have been taking the first step. 
But it is a second step when we come together and study the question. There is 
one phrase in the service of my church which I always say with the greatest satis- 
faction, because it seems to me to give the key to the situation. We pray that we 
may hold ‘the unity of the spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of 
litezer: 


MR. LITTLEFIELD.—‘ We have with us today a gentlemen who has been 
foremost in organizing the party that is about to leave our shores for the Holy 
Land. [understand that during this trip among other places of interest the party 
will visit Jerusalem and Ephesus, the earlier and the later homes of St. John, and I 
am sure we shall be glad to hear from him something of the purposes and plans of 
this pilgrimage to the most interesting shrines of the Christian world. I have great 
pleasure in introducing Mr. A. B. McCrillis, of Providence”. 


MR. McCRILLIS. ; 

“*Mr. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW CiTizENs :—I am glad to have the opportunity 
of making a brief statement in regard to the approaching pilgrimage to the Holy 
Land. The International Sunday School Convention, at its meeting in Denver, 
appointed a committee of three to arrange for a World’s Sunday School Convention 
at Jerusalem next April. 

“One of the finest steamers afloat, the ‘Grosser Kurfurst’ of the North 
German line, has been chartered for a trip of 72 days. 


“—~ 


REMARKS AT THE BUSINESS MEN’S LUNCH. 409 


** We shall land at Madeira, Gibraltar, Algiers, Malta and many other Mediter- 
ranean ports, and make extended stops at the five great cities that have each been 
recognized in turn as the World’s Capitals,—Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem, 
Cairo and Rome. 

‘““The company will be made up wholly of representative persons who are in 
hearty sympathy with the great cause we represent. Already more than 8oo dele- 
gates have been booked, 31 from Rhode Island and some from every state and 
territory in the Union, and all but two of the provinces of the Dominion of Canada. 

“Tt is already known that there will be representatives from Mexico and one 
or more of the West India Islands; and a number of missionaries who have been 
on furlough in this country will return to their fields with us, taking in the con- 
vention en route. 

“This is not in any sense to bea pleasure excursion. Nearly 200 ministers 
are already booked for the trip, and the rest of the company consists of Sunday 
School superintendents, teachers, and earnest Bible students, who are making the 
trip that they may better understand the Bible from studying it on the spot where 
so much of it was written and so many of its scenes enacted. 

** We shall cross and recross several times the routes of Paul and John in the 
Mediterranean, passing the Isle of Patmos, and spending a day in Smyrna, one of 
the cities to which John wrote, and where Polycarp, John’s disciple, received his 
Martyr’s crown, and where his authenticated tomb still remains, a tangible con- 
nection between the time of John and our day, connecting the first and twentieth 
centuries. We shall spenda day at Ephesus distinguished by its theatre and the 
temple of Diana, but still more by the residence and sufferings of John and Paul. 

“<The ship is to be our home from our start till our return. We shall have 
continuous convention work in all departments of Sunday School training, with 
daily lectures by some of the foremost Bible students in the world. 

** At the same time that we go from America, another palatial steamer will start 
from England for the same destination, with a company that will be at least the 
equal of ours in its scholarly attainments and its enthusiastic interest in Bible 


study. ; 
*<Tt is already known that a great many missionaries and Christian workers are 


coming up to the convention from all over the East, from many points in Europe, 
Asia, Africa and Australia. 

** Seventeen days will be spent in the Holy Land, and a horse-back trip taken 
the entire length of the land from Damascus to Hebron. 

‘Our convention tent will be pitched at the foot of the Mount of Olives, 
within a few hundred feet of Calvary and our Saviour’s tomb. 

‘*There will be sectional meetings of great interest at the sea of Galilee, 
Shechem, the Mount of Olives, and many other places closely associated with the 
life and work of our Lord and the disciples. 

** We shall visit the excavations in progress by various exploration societies at 
Ephesus, Gezer, Heliopolis and Rome. 

‘©The American Consul General at Constantinople has secured for us special 
privileges in the city of Constantinople and special protection in our trip through 
the Land. 

*¢ The great Ottoman Museum in Constantinople and the great Boulak Museum 
in Cairo, and the priceless collections of the Vatican and other museums in Rome, 
are all to be thrown open to us. 

‘* My time will not permit more than this brief reference to a few of the prom- 
inent points covered on our cruise. I should be glad to tell you of the arrange- 





410 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


ments for the great convention and for valuable side trips. Ican only say it is 
the opportunity of a lifetime and every one who can should avail himself of the 
privilege”. 


MR. LITTLEFIELD.—‘‘I wish at this point to call upon Rev. Dr. Charles 
M. Melden, Pastor of the Mathewson Street Methodist Episcopal Church, who 
will address us upon the ‘ Relation of Christ to the Church’”. 


DR. MELDEN. 


**Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN :—It is said that Carlyle and Emerson were 
walking one day together during Emerson’s visit to Scotland, and during their 
conversation Carlyle, pointing to a church in the distance, said, ‘If Christ had not 
died, that church would never have stood there and we would not have been walk- 
ing here together now.’ And that is emphatically true. If Christ had not lived 
and died we would not be here in this delightful fellowship to-day. And it seems 
to me, as the last speaker has so admirably said, that the secret of Christian unity 
is allegiance to Jesus Christ. Our religion, if it is anything, is loyalty to Christ, 
a personal relationship, and everyone of us stands true to our profession, if we are 
true to Jesus Christ, the great Founder of our Church. And in proportion as we 
are true to Him and loyal to Him will we be loyal and true to each other in delight- 
ful, Christian fellowship. This I conceive to be the relation of Christ to His 
Church. He is the Head of His Church. He fills it with His spirit. The Church 
is bound to Him by ties of personal loyaliy. It is sometimes said that the Church 
is losing its grip on men. I don’t believe it. It is sometimes said that in working 
men’s assemblies the name of Christ is applauded and the name of the Church 
hissed. I do not believe that this is true. Nor doI believe that these assemblies 
always represent the working men of our country. I believe that the Church has 
its support very largely from the laboring classes. But I want to say that if the 
name of Christ is applauded, and the name of the Church is hissed in any country 
or land, I believe it is because we do not represent the spirit and characteristics of 
the Lord Jesus Christ faithfully to men. And it is our business as members of 
the Church of Christ to show our loyalty to Him by reflecting as far as possible 
His spirit and characteristics in our lives”. 


MR. LITTLEFIELD.—“‘It is said that Dean Stanley was once calling upon 
an eccentric man who had arranged around his reception room a large number of 
.. mirrors, and as Dean Stanley entered the reception room he looked calmly around 
upon the multiplied reflections of his form and remarked, ‘A very respectable col- 
lection of the clergy’. We are all familiar with the fact that a book has recently 
been written entitled the ‘Ascent of the Soul’, and probably some of us know the 
author of that book. Recently this order came from England, the edition having 
been exhausted there, ‘ Please send us a thousand copies of Dr. Bradford’s souls’. 
This was the multiplication of the mirrors as applied to the Dean of Congregation- 
alism, Dr. Amory H. Bradford. We shall now have the pleasure of hearing from 
Dr. Bradford on ‘ The Light of the World in Japan’ ”. 


DR. BRADFORD. 


‘“* Mr. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN :—I do not know how that cable found its 
way to Providence, but I shall never cease to be surprised at anything which I find 
in this city. Our time is nearly up, and I shall detain you with my remarks for 
but a single moment. Your subject, as it is now stated sounds differently from 
what it did when it was given to me earlier. This morning I was told that Iwas to 


REMARKS AT THE BUSINESS MEN’S LUNCH. Ait 


speak on ‘ The Present Crisis in Japan’; but it makes very little difference which 
way the subject is phrased. In any case it is too large for an after-dinner 
speech. 

“*T shall mention but a few of the many thoughts which press for utterance to 
us at this time when our eyes are turned toward the Eastern coast of Asia. A great 
struggle between theJapanese and the Russians now seems to be inevitable. What will 
be the result? No one can tell. A few facts however, may be stated without fear 
of contradiction. The Japanese, by the most remarkable tests to which any people 
could be subjected have proved themselves the most patriotic people in the world. 
The surrender by the Daimios of the land and authority which they had possessed 
for generations in order that the unity and greatness of the Empire might be pro- 
moted, was the most magnificent act in modern history. If all the governors of 
the various states of our Union instead of being mere rulers were the owners of 
their territory, and they, in order that the nation might be spared, should volun- 
tarily surrender all their rights and all their possessions, their act would be 
parallel to the sacrifices which the Daimios and the Shogun made for Japan. 
They literally sacrificed everything for the Empire;— many of them were after- 
ward rewarded but their action was not stimulated by the prizes which were 
offered. 

‘Japan is the most progressive nation which the world has ever known. It 
has come to its place of power more swiftly than any other nation ever did. It is 
only about fifty years ago that Commodore Perry opened her doors to the outside 
world. ‘The fifty years since then have made her one of the most intelligent, well 
governed and civilized people on the face of the earth. 

“Tf the conflict which now seems impending must go on, I plead for sympathy 
for the Japanese. One of their leaders said to me a few years ago when I was 
there,—‘ We were not the enemies of China during the late war; we felt that we were 
called upon to be the teacher of China, and now that the war is over we are as good 
friends asever’. That remark indicates their spirit. They stand for an open door, 
for the larger commerce, for a progressive life and for a more generous civilization. 
If the war must come the welfare of the world in the immediate future depends 
upon their success in the struggle. 

“‘But will they be successful? Ah, there is the question! The Japanese are 
more like the French than the Germans. They are as brave as it is possible for 
men to be. They care nothing for their own lives; but they are dealing with 
Russia, that power which seems never to be in a hurry, that never rests, that is 
pushing on for the possession of Manchuria, and ultimately for parts of China. 
What the outcome will be none of us know, but I fear that at the first victory will 
be with the Japanese and then later that it will be the crushing of Japan. Let us 
pray God that this may not be the result. 

‘*Gentlemen, we here in Providence today have little influence; our meeting 
will not be heard of in London, Paris, Berlin or in St. Petersburg, but even we 
may do a little in the way of influencing. A whisper sometimes will start an 
avalanche, and our whisper may yet be heard even on the continent of Europe. There 
is one thing at least that we may do, and no American citizen has a more sacred 
privilege or duty. We may demand that all the powers shall submit their inter- 
national questions to the Court at the Hague instead of to an arbitrament of arms. 
I trust that in some way even Russia may be made acquainted with our profound 
conviction that the questions now at issue between herself and Japan should be 
referred to that Supreme ‘Court of the world, in that city which, in the order of 
Providence will some day be the capital of all the nations of the earth. We may 


Are THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


send our conviction as to what should be, and thus do our small part in preserving 
the world’s peace”’.* 


MR. LITTLEFIELD.—“ We are fortunate in having with us the chief magis- 
trate of our State whom I am sure we are all delighted to honor, and although I got 
him here under a promise not to call upon him for a speech, I hope he will use his 
executive clemency and pardon me for breaking that promise. The Governor will 
now address us”. 


GOVERNOR GARVIN. 


‘“Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN :— As the chairman has said, I came for 
the purpose of listening and Jearning. But for two reasons I am interested in the 
Conference which is going on in this city. In the first place, because as a layman 
I look at it very much in the way it has been presented to you by Mr. Palmer, as 
an evidence of the growing unity in religion. In my early daysas a boy I remember 
that there were very great antagonisms among the various protestant denominations. 
There was a narrowness on the part of individual clergymen in their theological 
views, and a keen opposition to one another on the part of the various denomina- 
tions. That has all changed ina very radical way. The evidences of it are not 
more marked than those which we see here today. And we see this clearly in the 
Young Men’s Christian Association which combines so many different denomina- 
tions. For this reason your Conference is of great interest to me. 

And for another reason. For sometime I have been endeavoring in one way 
or another to urge upon our citizens the necessity of not relying upon the past, 
that we should not be all the time referring to what Roger Williams did. We 
ought to do something as a state that will show that we are progressive and have 
something to give the world. I feel that this Conference is unique, and I hail it as 
a promising thing for our state, and trust it will be another impulse for the state 
itself and will enable us to set an example to posterity as we have inherited one 
from those who were here first”. 


MR. LITTLEFIELD.— ‘“‘I was fortunate in securing the attendance of 
another official, but he pleads the lateness of the hour, and also my promise not to 
callupon him. Yet I feel that we must have a word from him before we adjourn. 
I take great pleasure in presenting the Mayor of our city”. 


MAYOR MILLER. 


‘“Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN :— I was very happy to come here today, 
when I was told by your chairman that I would not be required to speak. It was 
pleasant to feel that I would not have to do so. I noticed, however, as I sat here, 
that during the remarks of one of the speakers, the attention of the audience 
seemed to turn in my direction; and he was speaking then of the former require- 
ments of a minister. I was reminded of a former friend of mine, a very excellent 


* In accordance with this suggestion of Dr. Bradford, the following resolution, offered by Rev. Frank J. 
Goodwin, was passed unanimously by a rising vote: 

“ WueErREAS, The question of a possible war between Russiaand Japan is one which concerns the inter- 
ests of all Christian people throughout the wor!d, who dread the sufferings and horrors of international 
strife, representatives of different Christian churches, including clergymen and laymen, assembled in the City 
of Providence, the Governor of the State of Rhode Island and the Mayor of the City of Providence being 
present, do hereby express their profound conviction that the dispute between the two nations should be sub- 
mitted for settlement to the court of arbitration at The Hague, which was so wisely constituted a few years 
ago at the suggestion of the Czar of Russia”’. 


REMARKS AT THE BUSINESS MEN’S LUNCH. 413 


man who lived in Massachusetts, and he said to me once, ‘‘ Do you know that less 
than thirty years ago I moved into a certain town (naming the town in Massa- 
chusetts), and I was transferred to the church of that town by letter. And a little 
while after that the clergyman came to see me and said,—‘ Mr. Jones, I understand 
you area Democrat’, and I said, ‘ Yes, sir, 1am of that political faith’. And he 
said, ‘ Mr. Jones, how can you reconcile your profession as a Christian with being 
a Democrat ?’” 

‘* But things have changed somewhat since then. There has been an advance 
in civilization throughout New England for which I think we are all happy. Iam 
very glad to be here today to listen to the remarks that have been made by the 
gentlemen present. And I am further reminded of what a change there has been 
in the religious world since I was a boy. When I was a boy up in a New England 
town and my parents were Baptists of the strictest type, there was a Methodist 
church also in the town and I think there was a great controversy between these 
two churches continually. It did not seem to me then that the members of the one 
thought there was any chance of the other being saved. I can remember distinctly 
the bitterness that existed when I heard it as a boy, but fortunately that is all gone 
by, and today we think we are actuated by different motives, and I am very glad to 
welcome to the City of Providence the clergymen from other cities and other towns 
to attend a Conference like this. Iam proud for the City of Providence, as the 
Governor has said he is for the State of Rhode Island, for such a Conference in 
the midst of us”. 


ye 


*AN ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN. 
BY REV. FREDERICK L. ANDERSON, D. D., 


PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION IN NEWTON THEOLOGICAL 


INSTITUTION, NEWTON CENTRE, MASS. 
PREFACE. 


An analysis is an effort to take a literary work to pieces for the sake of finding 
out just how it was put together, and why it was put together in just the form it 
bears. The purpose of this task is, therefore, to think the author’s thoughts after 
him, to discover the fundamental ideas underlying the gospel, to show how and 
why one thought follows another, and to reveal the plan of the whole as it lay in 
the author’s mind. 

Nothing could be easier than a topical or subject analysis of John, i.e., the 
Prologue, John’s Testimony, the First Disciples, etc.; and the same thing could 
be said of a chronological and geographical analysis, except that some details of 
chronology are difficult of decision. Such analyses are no analyses atall. Noone, 
who has thoroughly studied the gospel, supposes that John planned it in any such 
external or chronological way, even though he follows a chronological order. 

The work is a philosophical one, the results of reflection on the character and 
words of Jesus. The author is convinced by his experience with Jesus that He was 
more than He appeared to the world to be, and this book tells us how not only the 
author but all the disciples came to this conviction. This story of growing 
belief and final assurance is told by a selection of typical and significant incidents 
and discourses, which manifest the true inner character of Jesus, as God-sent 
Messiah, only begotton Son, Divine Word. From beginning to end the purpose 
is to detail how Jesus manifested His divine glory, how the disciples beheld it, and 
came to believe (1:14; 2:11; 20:8, 28, 29, 31). 

So, of course, Jésus is the one central sun of the gospel around whom all the 
other characters revolve, and from whom they gain significance. He is the sub- 
ject of every paragraph, the dominating figure in every scene. Even when He 
does not personally appear, as in 1: 19-28, and 9: 8-34, Jesus and His deeds are 
the focus of discussion. This fact gives the book a wonderful unity. 

The inner thought of the book, already described, is to be traced by certain 
characteristic and typical words. These words indicate, as it were, distinct strands of 
thought, which the author weaves together to make his gospel. (1) The first 
and most important strand of thought is Jesus’ manifestation of His glory. This 
runs through the whole book, and is the thread on which all else is strung. 
Several characteristic words mark it: Glory and Glortfy, Manifestation, Sign, 
Works, Light, Word. He manifests Himself as the God-sent, divinely foretold 
Messiah of the Jews (a subordinate representation), as the only begotten Son of 
God, as the Divine Word, who was in the beginning with God and was God. 
He manifests Himself in signs of divine power and love, in words which disclose 


* Embodying also address on ‘‘ How the Gospel was Made”, delivered at the Fifth Conference, held at 
the Central Baptist Church, Providence, R. I., February 10, 1904. 


414 


AN ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL. Als 


a divine character, and in the providentially ordered circumstances which reveal 
Him. (2) The second strand, closely connected with the first, is Jesus’ relation to 
the Father, especially His union with Him and revelation of Him. The Prologue 
contains this strand as indeed it contains all the others, and greatly emphasizes it. 
See 1:1, 14,18. The profoundest chapters, like 5, 7, 8, 10, 14, 15, 17, are 
full of it. The thoughts are most clearly expressed in 1:18; 10:30 and 14:9. 
The characteristic words are Father and Son. (3) As Jesus moves through the 
various scenes, manifesting His glory, some see that glory and believe. This 
belief continually intensifies throughout the history until it becomes absolute 
assurance, deathless love and divine adoration. On the other hand, others refuse 
to see, and do not believe. This unbelief also intensifies throughout the history, 
growing from questioning into opposition, deadly hatred and, finally, apostasy 
on the one hand and murder on the other. The characteristic words of this strand 
are Belzeve, See. The unbelieving mass is called the World, which is Blind. 
(4) So, naturally between these believers and unbelievers comes a separation, 
which grows wider and cleaner until, with the departure of Judas, Jesus is left 
alone with His little company, while outside is the great, hostile World. The 
little company has no characteristic name in the gospel. They are Hs own, 
His friends, His sheep, those whom the Father has given Him out of the world. 
And yet it has a characteristic and significant word, that word is Love; beloved and 
loving. (5) Belief constantly manifests itself in testimony to the truth. John 
the Baptist is the first witness; the disciples and all believers constantly testify ; 
Jesus Himself is the great and chief witness to the truth; the Holy Spirit shall 
testify to Christ as the Spirit of Truth. The characteristic words here are 
Testify, Testimony and Truth. Unbelief manifests itself also in questioning, 
opposition, persecution, hatred, and finally in the rejection of the truth, and the 
crucifixion of Jesus. (6) The final issues are also set forth. The believer has 
Eternal Life, begun here, lasting forever. This life comes from Jesus, who is 
Himself the Life, and so the Giver and Sustainer of it. The unbelieving world 
already rests under Judgment, which is a state of Death. The characteristic words 
here are Lzfe and Judgment and Judge. Death appears only infrequently. 

The following work is an attempt to recognize these strands of thought in the 
Gospel, and to follow their lead in making the analysis. So far as the writer 
knows, this is the first attempt to follow this principle. The significant words 
have seemed to the writer to be guide-posts, and to indicate the author’s inmost 
thought. Still, care has been taken not to be led aside from the real argument by 
exceptional and insignificant uses of characteristic words, nor on the other hand 
to grope when the words fail and the thoughts remain as in chapters 18-20. 
These words will be printed in italics. Constant notes will inform the 
reader of the reasons for the analysis at critical and difficult points. Side 
by side with this analysis of the thought, brief remarks will supply what is 
needed in the way of chronological and geographical interest. No one can recog- 
nize more clearly than the writer how imperfectly the general plan has been carried 
out. The authorities whom I have found most useful are Luthardt. Reynolds, 
Godet, Westcott and Professor Riggs. 


THE GENERAL ANALYSIS. 


Note.—This is inserted before the detailed analysis for convenience of refer- 
ence for those who wish to examine merely the larger divisions. The wording is 
exactly the same as in the detailed analysis. 





416 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


INTRODUCTION. — THE PROLOGUE. 1: 1-18. 


THe THEME OF THE GOSPEL.—The Manifestation of the Glory of the Word 
become Flesh and its effects of Beliefand Opposition. 1: 19—20: 31. 
I. The Preliminary Manifestations of the.Word become Flesh, 
1319-4 = 54- 
A. The Initial Manifestation by Testimony. 1: 19-51. 
B. The Initial Self-Manifestations. 2:1—4:54. 
II. The Fundamental Self-Manzfestations of the Word become Flesh, 
resulting in growing Belief and Love over against growing 
Unbelief and Hate, and a consequent increasing Separation ot 
Believers from the World. 5:1—12:50. 


A. Jesus Manifests Himself in Union with the Father as the 
source of Life. 5 :1-47. 

B. Jesus Manzfests Himself as the sustainer (the Bread) of 
Life. 6:1-71. 

Cc. The Waverings, Questionings and Attacks of the People 
in view of past and fresh Self-Manifestations of Jesus, 
mostly defensive. Whence He comes, whither He 
goes, who He is (7: 25-36; 8:21-57) is the subject of 
discussion. The effects are at first confused and the 
decision doubtful, but the final Result is open rupture. 
7:1—8:59. 

D. Jesus Manifests Himself as the Light of the World and 
the Good Shepherd of His Flock in Unton with the 
Father. 9:1—10:42. 

&. Jesus Mantfests His Glory as the Resurrection and the 
Life in word and in deed with results of final Cleavage. 
Il : I-57. 

Ff. The final effects of the fundamental Self-Mandfestations 
of Jesus in the World. 12: 1-50. 

Ill. The Final Self-Manzfestations of the Glory of the Word become 
Flesh, Manifestations of His Love and Conquering Life in 
Word, chapters 13-17, and Deed, chapters 18-20. 

A. Jesus Manifests His Love and Life in Union with the 
Father to those who Love Him and, joined with Him 
in Life-Unton, are now Separated from the World, with 
a constant view to the future (especially the immediate 
future) of Himself and His disciples. 13 : 1—17 : 26. 

B. Jesus Manizfests the Glory of His Love and victorious 
Life in voluntary surrender to Death at the hands of 
the Unbelieving World, 18 and 19; and the Glory of 
His victorious Zzfe in the Resurrection, producing the 
climax of Belief, 20. 

APPENDIX. — Chapter 21. 


THE DETAILED ANALYSIS. 
INTRODUCTION.—THE PROLOGUE. 1: 1-18. 
1. The Pre-existence, Personality and Deity of the Word, vs. 1, 2, or 
the nature of the Word and His relation to God. 


AN ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL. 417 


2. The Word, the agent in the creation of the entire Universe, for He 
was the Zzfe, vs. 3, 4a, or the relation of the Word to the 
Universe. 

3- Because the Lz/e, He is the Lzght of men, vs. 4b-13, or the relation 
of the Word to men. 

a. But that Lzght has always been met by the obtuseness 
and opposition of human darkness, v. 5. 
6. John festzfied to the Light to the end that all might 
believe, vs. 6-8. . 
ce. That Lzght, continually streaming into the world, lights 
every man, vy. 9, with two-fold result. 
(1) He is not generally recognized or received in 
His own world, vs. 10, Il. 
(2) Some receive Him, dJelzeve, and become children 
of God, vs. 12, 13. 

4. The Word became flesh, and we beheld His divine glory, vs. 14-18, 
or the relation of the Word to us, z. e., the author and his fel- 
low disciples. 

a. This interpretation is in accord with John the Baptist’s 
testimony, V. 15. 

6. And with our personal experience, as recipients of the 
fulness, grace and ¢ruth of the God-revealing Son, vs. 
16-18. (vy. 18 returns on v. 14 and vy. 1). 


Note on 1: 1-18.—These verses, usually called the Prologue, are evidently 
introductory. In one sense they stand by themselves ; in another sense they contain 
the whole Gospel in miniature, and explain all that follows. We must read the 
Gospel in the light of this introduction. Indeed we shall find much of the Gospel 
a somewhat detailed development of the Prologue. These verses, especially the 
first five, are the author’s final convictions about Jesus Christ, the result of lifelong 
reflection on the historical manifestation of the Word, which he is about to relate. 
So the author begins with his conclusion, vs. 1-5, and in this introduction sketches 
in a few bold strokes the main facts, vs. 6-14, and the effect produced by those facts 
on the world and on himself and on his fellow disciples. This effect he then pro- 
ceeds to relate at length in the Gospel, ending, 20:28, with the conclusion with 
which he begins in 1: I. 

Adopting another more topical analysis, some one has called the Prologue the 
great gate into the Gospel, with three doorways: the first, vs. 1-5, theological; 
the second, vs. 6-13, historical; the third, vs. 14-18, the doorway of experience. 
So the whole may be called the philosophic conclusion drawn from an experience 
of the facts of the life of Jesus Christ. 

Note that we have in the Prologue the following characteristic and significant 
words: glory, light, word, (first strand); Father, Son, cf. vs. 1, 18, (second 
strand) ; delzeve, world, (third strand); the world, vs. 10, 11, and belzevers, vs. 
13, 14, are set over against each other (fourth strand); belief finds expression in 
testimony, VS. 7, 15, and mention is made of ¢ruth, vs. 14, 17, while the opposition 
of the world to light and truth is emphasized (fifth strand); the sixth strand is 
undeveloped; its characteristic /7fe appears, and that life is described in men, but 
not in terms, vs. 14, 16. Judgment, however, is not mentioned, though the sepa- 
ration of judgment is made plain. Thus all the strands of thought in the Gospel 
appear in the Prologue. Of their words, Jove and judgment are wanting, though 


418 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


the ideas are here; also s7gu and works, which belong to the more detailed develop- 
ment. Word, in the sense used in 1: 1-18, is peculiar to this passage. 


PRELIMINARY NOTE ON THE GREAT Divisions OF THE GosPEL. The Gospel 
falls easily into three great divisions, excluding chapter 21, which is as clearly an 
Appendix as 1: 1-18 isan Introduction. The first is 1: 19—4:54; the second, 5 : 1— 
12:50; the third, 13: 1—20:31. Chapter 12 is evidently a transition chapter, yet it 
belongs more with the Ministry than with the Passion. It sums up the issues of 
the conflict before entering upon the final self-revelations of love and victorious 
life. Chapter 13 is evidently the historical introduction to the discourse to the 
disciples, nay even contains the beginning of it. The reasons for placing 18-20 
with 13-17 will be discussed at 18. Chapter 20 evidently goes with 18, 19. The 
historical, literary, and thought connections are very close. 


THE THEME OF THE GOSPEL. 1: 19—20:31. 


Tue Manzfestation oF THE Glory or THE Word BEcoME FLESH, AND ITs 

Errects oF Belief AND Opposition. 
I. 
THe Pretiminary Manifestations of THE Word BECOME FLESH. 1: 19—4:54. 

Note.—These manifestations are varied and fragmentary, and so, in a sense, 
general, compared with those of chapters 5-11. 

A. Tue Initiat Manifestation By Testimony. 1:19-51- 
1. The Yestimony of John the Baptist to Christ. 1: 19-34. 
a. His testimony to the Pharisees who knew not C&rzst, though in 
the midst of them (v. 26). Vs. 19-28. 
‘Note.—Here is the first bel7ever, John, testifying to unbelief, which is as 
yet only non-recognition. 
(1) Negative Zestzmony. John is not the Christ, but a proph- 
esied herald of Him, vs. 19-23. : 
(2) Positively. The Chrzstis here and is immensely superior to 
John in dignity, vs. 24-28. 
6. Another ¢estzmony of John, vs. 29-34. 
(1) Jesus is the sin-removing Lamb of God, vy. 29. 
(2) Jesus superior to John on account of His pre-existence (cf. 
v. 15), but John came that Jesus might be manzfested to 
Israel in baptism, vs. 30, 31. 
(3) John’s festimony to the Spirit’s descending and abiding on 
Christ, a divine testimony that it is He who baptizes with 
the Spirit, vs. 32, 33- 
(4) John’s ¢estimony, Jesus is the Son of God, v. 34 (cf. 20:31). 
2. The Belzef and Testimony of the First Disciples. 1: 35-51- 

Note.—The little circle of delzevers now begins to grow. Their de/zef springs 
out of their experience with Jesus (1:14); cf. ‘‘comeand see”, vs. 40, 47- So 
there is self-revelation of Jesus here, cf. vs. 47-51; but it is very subordinate. 

a. John ¢estifies again, and Andrew and one other follow Jesus and dedieve 
(cf. v. 41), vs. 35-40. 

6. Andrew festifies that Jesus is the Christ, and Simon Peter believes, 
VS. 41, 42. 


AN ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL. 419 


c. Philip’s dedzefand similar testimony to Nathaniel, vs. 43-46. 

d. Nathaniel delzeves (v. 50), and festijes that Jesus is the Sox of God, 
the King of Israel, vs. 47-50. 

Larger revelations promised, vs. 50, 51- 

NoTE ON PLACE AND TimEr.—Bethany beyond Jordan, 1:28 (cf.10:40). Prob- 
ably about opposite Jericho. After the Temptation. Four days (vs. 19, 29, 35, 43) 
in later February, A. D. 27, if Jesus was baptized, as is most probable, in early 
January. Jesus probably not present on first of these days (cf. vs. 26, 29). 

B. Tue Initrat Sevr-Manifestations. 2:1—4:54. 
1. By the Szgw of turning the water into wine. 2:1-11. He thus mandfested 

His glory as kindly Lord of Nature (cf. 1:3). Increase of belzef in 

His disciples, v. 11. 

2. Jesus manzfests Himself as the Purifier and Lord of His Father’s house, 

reminding His disciples of prophecy. 2: 12-22. 

Notre.—A minor strain of thought—that of fulfilled prophecy and divine pre- 
determination—runs through the Gospel, cf. 12:14, 15, 37-40; 13:18; 15:25; 
Myre Q 245196, 377etc. 

a. In the opposing Jews, Jesus already sees the murderous outcome of 
unbelzef, and enigmatically gives them the s¢gz of His victory in 
death and resurrection, vs. 18-21. “ 

6. After the event, this prophecy increases the disciples’ delze/, v. 22. 

Note on Time.—Passover, beginning April 11, A. D. 27. 

3. Jesus declares Lzfe, through Jdelzef in Him, not belief in szgnus, the prime 

necessity. 2 :23—3 :36. 

Notr.— The transition to the third chapter and that chapter itself are very 
difficult of analysis. Is Nicodemus one of the untrustworthy believers, who believe 
the signs and yet do not believe? It seems so, cf. 3:12. In contrast with the 
Sadducees of 2:18, Nicodemus and his Pharisee friends can read the signs and see 
that Jesus is a teacher from God, 3:2. Yet, like those in 2: 23-25, he and they 
lack one thing, on which the gospel lays greatest stress, z. e., life, birth from the 
Spirit. This Nicodemus has not yet. He has not seen the Kingdom of God, much 
less entered it, for he has no life, which expresses itself in obedience (water, v. 5). 
He knows not the a, b, c of spiritual religion, v. 10. This is all true despite the fact 
that Nicodemus afterwards became a real believer. The whole passage is remark- 
able in depicting the effect of Jesus’ first appearance in Jerusalem. There is a lack 
ot clear understanding, a fluidity in the situation, which marks the time before 
men begin to take sides. 

Nicodemus beginning to detach himself from the Jews of 2 : 18—the woman of 
Samaria and the nobleman of chapter 4 doing the same thing more decisively— 
might suggest an analysis. Yet this is too thin a thread on which to string this 
whole section. So too, placing chapters 3 and 4 in opposition to 2:12-22, we 
might see how Jesus, rejected by the nation, turns to individuals. But He does 
not turn to Nicodemus, Nicodemus turns to Him; and the baptizing in Judea, 
3:22, is not in line with such an analysis. Moreover in this chapter Nicodemus 
does not become a believer and so can hardly be classed with the Samaritan 
_ woman and the nobleman. The difficulties are so great that Meyer suggests the 
external expedient of regarding this as an important incident in Jerusalem at this 
time, related merely because of its historical interest. The better way probably is 
to regard the Nicodemus incident as the foundation of the teachings about spir- 


420 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


itual life (cf. 1:33)—here as the prime necessity to real belief. This is further 
developed in 3:16 sq. and chapters 4,5 and6. Chapter 3:1-13 does not consti- 
tute a self-revelation of Jesus (cf. however 1:33; 3:34b. Westcott), but vs. 14, 15 
do, and are the text from which vs. 16-21 are developed (cf. vs. 31-36). The chapter 
partakes of the varied and fragmentary character of the whole preliminary section 
I:19—4:54, and cannot be pressed into any mold of analysis without violence. 
Still 7fe seems to be the thread, which connects it with 2 : 23-25, on which most of 
chapter 3 is strung, and which extends into chapters 4, 5, 6. 

Chapter 3: 1-15 contains Jesus’ first extended discourse, but it is not long, 
and should not turn us aside from the thought-analysis, which underlies both 
incident and discourse. 


3- (Repeated.) Jesus declares Life, through Jdel/zef in Him, not belief in sigus, 
the prime necessity. 2:23—3:36. 

a. The historical introduction. Many szgns produce many untrust- 
worthy delievers. Nicodemus a notable example. 2:23—3:2. 

&. Jesus tells Nicodemus plainly that he who merely del/zeves because of 
signs, does not even see God’s Kingdom; that the prime necessity 
is new /zfe, a spiritual rebirth (cf. 1:13), which shows itself in obed- 
ience and joining the company of faith (water, v. 5); vs.3-8. (Note 
that it is Jesus who baptizes with the Spirit, cf. 1 : 33.) 

(1) To this truth festémony is borne by (a) the body of Jewish 
teaching, vs.9, 10. (4) Jesus, John the Baptist and the 
disciples—‘‘ we”, v. 11. (Note the ‘‘ we” and ‘‘ ye” begin 
to show the sefaration of the witnessing company from 
the world.) (c) Jesus who knows heavenly realities as 
none other can, vs. I2, 13. 

(2) This eternal 7z/e belongs to him, who dedzeves not in sigus, 
but in the crucified Messtak. (This crucifixion a part of 
the divine purpose, ‘‘ must”.) Vs. 14, 15. Cf. the Lamb of 
God, 1 : 29, 36. 

c. The author’s reaffirmation and development of the thought of vs. 14, 
15. Vs. 16-21. 

(1) The source of the gift of His only begotten Son, is God’s 
love for the world, a desire that all might have this e#ernal 
life through éde/zef on the Son and so should be saved, not 
judged. Vs. 16, 17. 

(2) Belvef, or lack of it, the ground of present acquittal or judg- 
ment before God; judgment because of rejection of light, 
due to an evil life. Vs. 18-21. 

d. Excursus. Over against the rejection and half-hearted reception in 
Jerusalem, which drives Jesus into Judea, record is made of John the 
Baptist’s final fest7mony to Christ and His ultimate victory, vs. 22-36. 

(1) Circumstance leading up to it, vs. 22-26. 

(2) TheZestimony. Jesus’ God-given success is fitting the Chrést, 
the bridegoom of His people, and will continually increase, 
VS. 27-30. 

° (3) The author’s comments, reaffirming and developing this tes- 
timony, (a kind of climax and review of the whole section, 
cf. 3: 18-21). The spiritual supremacy of the Sow and of 
His ¢estimony. He who éelzeves counts God ¢rue and has 


AN ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL. 421 


eternal /zfe. He who does not believe rests under God’s 
abiding wrath. Vs. 31-36. 
4. Jesus manifests Himself as the Lzfe Giver. 4: 1-54. 


Notrre.—Chapter 4 is more easily co-ordinated. Vs. 7-15 are the heart of it. 
Jesus presents Himself as the Giver of the New Zzfe, a distinct advance on chap- 
ter 3. Vs. 16-42 show Him actually giving and the woman and the people actually 
receiving the new life. And without a szgv, save of knowledge, vs. 17-19, 29, they 
confess Him Messiah and Saviour of the World. That sign, delzef, and lzfe are 
still in mind is shown in 43-54. Here the nobleman de/zeves in Jesus before he 
sees any szg7 at all, and Jesus is seen again in twofold manner, as Life-Giver. So, 
on the side of growth in de/zef, the last incident is the climax of 2:23—4:54. It 
seems a mistake to think the principal interest here historical; the historical enters 
in indeed, and modifies the thought-analysis, but the incidents and discourses are 
selected for the purpose of manzfesting Jesus. 


a. Yothe Woman of Samaria, 4:1-42. 
(1) Circumstances leading up to the manifestation, vs. 1-6. 
(2) Jesus manifests Himself in word as the Giver of Zzfe, the 
Giver of the living water and leads the woman to desire it 
(vs. 10, 13, 14), VS. 7-15. 
(3) His divine insight convicts the woman of sin and leads her 
to recognize Him as a prophet, vs. 16-19. 
(4) His word on spiritual worship leads to His'self-disclosure as 
Messiah, vs. 20-26. 
(5) Thus leading her to delzef in Him, He actually gives new 
Zife to her and her people. 
(za) The woman’s festzmony (cf. v. 39), vs. 28-30. 
(6) Belzef of the people, who ¢estzfy that He is the 
Messiah, the Saviour of the World, vs. 39-42. 
(6) Excursus. Jesus tells His disciples of the satisfaction, joy 
and reward of the harvest to eternal /z/e, vs. 27, 31-38. 


Note—The woman and the Samaritans believe without any szgz, save 
that of divine knowledge, vs. 17-19, 29. 


6. Tothe nobleman in Cana, 4: 43-54. 

(1) Circumstances of favorable reception in Galilee, founded on 
signs seen in Jerusalem at the feast, and leading up to the 
following incident, vs. 43-46a. 

(2) To the nobleman who Jéelzeves the simple word of Jesus, 
v. 50, without any szgvz at all, Jesus reveals Himselfas Lz/fe- 
giver, v.51. Resulting increased belzef. Vs. 46b-54. 


Nore—The author does not sharply distinguish between the giving 
of physical and spiritual life, cf. 5 :21-29; 11:25, 26, and chapter 20. A 
great truth may lie hid here. 


Notre on Time AND PLaAce.—Notes of time are indefinite. The conversation 
+ with Nicodemus probably occurred during, or better, shortly after the Passover, 
April, A. D. 27. The Judean Ministry, parallel with John’s, probably was at 
least six months long. This brings Jesus back through Samaria into Galilee 
about December of 27. No one knows where Aenon, near to Salim, was. For 
Sychar, see Geo. Adam Smith’s Historical Geography, pp. 367-375. 


422 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Il. 


THE FUNDAMENTAL SELF-Manzfestations oF THE Word BECOME FLESH, RE- 
SULTING IN GROWING Belief AND Love OVER AGAINST GROWING Unbelief 
AND /late, AND A CONSEQUENT INCREASING Separation or Believers FROM 
THE World. 5:1—12:50. 

Notre ON THE SECOND GREAT Division. — All recognize the preliminary, 
fragmentary, general character of the First Division, 1 : 18—4:54, which makes it 
difficult to analyze. Most of the fundamental self-manifestations found in 5-12 
appear earlier, and all are hinted, but in this section, which constitutes the body 
of the Gospel, they are presented in more massive form, are discussed and defended 
at greater length and from different points of view. The Self-Manifestations 
seem to be the ruling thought of these chapters as a whole. They run through 
them all, and except in 7 and 8 hold the place of first importance. Another great 
strand of thought is the growth of Unbelief and Hate, so that some have named 
the whole Division, the Period of Conflict. This strand must not be minimized if 
a true view of this division is to be maintained, and yet it is only in 7 and 8 that 
it becomes dominant, the self-revelations taking the second place. The increasing 
Separation between Believers and the World rises to the dignity of a third parallel 
strand, and is especially emphasized in g and 10, if indeed it does not dominate 
there. These last two strands have also appeared in 1 : 19—4 : 54, as, of course, also 
in the Prologue, but only occasionally and merely in embryo. On many grounds 
connected with the analysis, the question has been raised whether chapter 5 did 
not originally follow chapter 6. , More will be said on this in note preceding 
chapter 7. Fora brief and clear discussion of this view, see Burton’s Purpose and 
Plan of the Four Gospels, John, pp. 12-26. 

A. Jesus Manifests HIMSELF IN Union WiITH THE Father AS THE SOURCE 
OR EL zfe4 yNt-a 7. 

NoTE on Time.—The correct reading of 5:1 is ‘‘a” feast of the Jews. This is 
so indefinite as to preclude any dogmatism about it. Possibly the best guess zs the 
Pentecost or Passover (?) of A. D. 28. 

1. By the work of giving new life to the impotent man. Vs. 1-9. 
2. The Opposition urging a charge of Sabbath-breaking, vs. 10-16, Jesus reveals 
Himself as the Soz acting in perfect uzzty with the Father in thus giving 
life on the Sabbath, v. 17. 
a. This evokes the charge from the Jews that Jesus claims a peculiar 
divine Soxshkzf and an eguality with God; they therefore desire to 
kill Him, v. 18. 
4. Jesus does not deny their charge, but reasserts an absolute uzzty of 
action with God, anda perfect knowledge of the inner thought and 
purpose of God, vs. 19, 20a. 


Note—The following discourse is on these two lines—Jesus’ unzon and 
eguality with the Father, and His consequent status as a Source of Life. 
(1) On the ground of this wzzty and knowledge He promises 
greater works, v. 20b, viz :— 
(@) Spiritual resurrection of whom He will, v. 21. 
(6) Sudgment, which has been given Him that all men 
may honor Him even as they honor the Father, 
VS: 2235236 
(2) Returning to 2 (v. 17, cf. v. 21), Jesus reveals Himself as a 
self-existing source of /#fe, for both spiritual and corporeal 
resurrection, vs. 24-29. 


~—r? °6 SS 


AN ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL. 423 


(3) V. 30 reaffirms vs. 19, 20a, as the ground of the foregoing 
self-assertions. 
3. Jesus cites the festzmony for these claims. Vs. 31-47. 
a. The Father's testimony, vs. 32 and 37. 
John the Baptist’s, which He does not need, though they may, vs. 33-35- 
c. His divine works testzfy, v. 36. 
d. The O. T. Scriptures, which ¢es¢t7fy of Him, and which they do not 
believe on account of their love of human applause, vs. 37-47. 


i] 


B.—jJrsus Manifests HiMsELF AS THE SUSTAINER (THE BREAD) oF Life. 6:1-71. 


Note oF Time.—This is near Passover of A. D. 29. See v. 4. 


1. By the Szgx of His feeding the multitude. Vs. 1-24. 

a. The Story of the Feeding, vs. 1-13. 

6. Effect. In mere carnal belief (which is unbelief) the people think Him 
the prophet and wish to make Hima political king, but He with- 
draws, vs. 14, I5. 

c. Episode. Jesus walking on the water, a mere historical item, trans- 
ferring Him to Capernaum, whither the people come also, vs. 16-24. 

2. By His discourse on the Bread of Life. Vs. 25-59. 

a. First conversation, leading up to the statement, ‘‘I am the true heav- 
enly bread”, Jife giving, satisfying, given to fazth with result of 
eternal fe and resurrection at the last day. Result, unbelief (v- 36). 
Vs. 25-40. 

6. Second conversation, reaffirming the first, especially enlarging on 
their wzbeléef, and leading up to the declaration that this bread is 
His flesh, which He will give for the Zzfe of the world, vs. 41-51. 

c. Third conversation. To the perplexed and unbelieving Jews, Jesus 
emphatically reenforces the former statement, declaring eating His 
flesh and drinking His blood the pre-requisite of eternal Jzfe, and 
the basis of a /zfe-union between Himself and the dedzever, vs. 52-59. 

3. Results. Vs. 60-71. 

a. Unbelieving disciples, unable to bear this spiritual teaching, which 
dissipates all their worldly Messianic hopes, walk no more with 
Him, vs. 60-66. 

6. The Twelve Zestzfy their belief in Him and cling to Him, but one of 
them is a devil. Note the separation, but not complete till the 
withdrawal of Judas (13:30). Vs. 67-71. 

Notre.— In 5 and 6 Jesus interprets His own signs, tracing the power which 
heals the impotent man to His union with God, and declaring that His feeding of the 
bodies of the multitude is but a hint of His power to sustain the life of the soul. 
Some of Jesus’ hearers interpreted His signs, but only superficially. Jesus Him- 
self gives them their deepest significance. 


Note oN CHAPTERS 7 AND 8. An analysis here meets insuperable difficulties, 
and every scheme is justly open to criticism. The self-revelations of Jesus do not 
cease, indeed are probably more important in the author’s mind than many think. 
Jesus certainly asserts most strongly His divine origin, mission, function and 
nature. Yet, after all, these self-manifestations are mostly defensive, brought out 
by the questions and attacks of the people. So it is the situation which is most 
prominent. The attitude of the people for the time gets the upper hand in the 


424 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


drama. The conflict is here at its height, the attack is persistent. Jesus meets it 
by determined and unflinching self-assertions. The results are at first doubtful; 
the varying and varied thought of the mixed multitude is strikingly depicted. 
The confusion of the time has penetrated the narrative itself. The attacks first 
from one side and then from another, and the fragmentary nature of this report 
account perhaps for the dislocations, and are true to just sucha situation. But in 
the end the result is open rupture. The Jews hold the field and Jesus retires. In 
g-11 He more and more withdraws Himself. His final death and the separation of 
His sheep from the world are seen to be inevitable. 

It would be a great aid to clearness of analysis if the theory of displacement of 
various sections of the Gospel should prove true, for the difficulties of the present 
arrangement of the matter are insuperable. In Burton’s Purpose and Plan of the 
Four Gospels, John, pp. 12-20, already referred to, the following rearrangement 
is proposed: 6:1-71; 5:1-47; 7:15-24 (which evidently refers to chapter 5); 
721-13, 25-36, 45-52, 37-44; (8:1-11, interpolation); 8: 21-57; 9: 1-41; 10: 19-21; 
8 : 12-20, which evidently has close relations to chapter 9. This rearrangement 
should be studied carefully, but, as it is still merely a theory tentatively held, the 
following analysis, of course, proceeds on the basis of chapters 7 and 8 as we have 
them. However, we ask the reader to note that the confusion in the analysis is 
only the reflection of the confusion of the material. 


NoTE oN Time.—This chapter 7 is dated, vs. 2, 14, 37, as at the Feast of 
Tabernacles, Sept.-Oct. A. D. 29. Chapter 8 seems to have the same date, though 
there is no certainty. 


C. THe WaveERINGS, QUESTIONINGS AND ATTACKS OF THE PEOPLE IN VIEW OF 
PAST AND FRESH SELF-Manifestations oF JESUS, MOSTLY DEFENSIVE. 
WueEncre HE COMES, WHITHER HE GOES, WHO HE Is (7:25-36; 8:21-57), 


IS THE SUBJECT OF DISCUSSION. THE EFFECTS ARE AT FIRST CONFUSED, 


AND THE DECISION DOUBTFUL, BUT THE FINAL RESULT IS OPEN RUPTURE. 
7:1—8 : 59. 

I. Jesus goes up to the Feast of Tabernacles, an historical introduction with 
three significant points, describing the character of the following scenes. 
Tp 

a. His time, His final hour, has not yet come, vs. 6, 8. 
6. The world hates Him, v. 7. 
c. The differing opinions of the multitude concerning Him, vy. 12. 

In reply to questions and attacks, Jesus defends His claims and acts, and 
makes new manifestations of Himself. Varying résults. Vs. 14-52. 

a. Jesus asserts the divine origin and the ¢ruzh of His teaching, vs. 14-18, 
and defends His acts, especially His healing of the impotent man 
(chapter 5), vs. 19-24. 

4. Questioning, leading to Jesus’ assertion of His divine mission, has 
varying results, vs. 25-31. 

(1) Some would take Him, v. 30. 
(2) Many believed, v. 31. 

c. The Sanhedrin send officers to take Him, vs. 32-52. 

(1) Jesus, seeing in this, the prophecy of His arrest, predicts His 
early return to the Father, a statement which confuses the 
Jews and gives no occasion for the arrest, vs. 33-36. 

(2) He reveals Himself as the L7ving Water and the Giver of the 
Spirit, vs. 37-39. 


w 


4 


? 


AN ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL. 425 


NotTe.—Vs. 37-39 come in abruptly; see proposed rearrange- 
ment in note above. Still they seem needed here. The 
officers report His wonderful words, v. 46. They can 
hardly refer to the words in vs. 33, 34, which, though mys- 
terious, would not be particularly impressive. They prob- 
ably heard vs. 37-39, and referred to them. On this ground 
these words are grouped with vs. 33-36 in the Analysis. 

(3) Varying results, especially of the words of vs. 37-39. Vs. 
40-52. (Note the strain of separation.) 

(a) A division in the multitude, vs. 40-44. 
Some say a prophet or the Messzah, vs. 40, 41a. 
Some confused by a misapprehension, would have 
taken Him, vs. 41b-44. 
(6) A division in the Sanhedrin. 
The officers, impressed by vs. 37-39, do not take 
Him, vs. 45, 46. 
The Pharisees expostulate with them, vs. 47-49, 
Cha Visas 
Nicodemus deprecates their prejudgment of Jesus, 
VS. 50, 51. 
Note.—John 7 :53—8:11 is not an original part of this Gospel. It is omitted 
by R. V. 


3- Discussion involving the nature and mission of Jesus, the outcome of the 
conflict, the true character of discipleship and of the Jews. 8: 12-58. 


Nore.—8 : 12-58 might perhaps just as well have been made into subdivisions, 
d. e. f. g. under C. 2, whose necessarily general heading would cover the contents. 
A new heading is substituted for convenience of analysis and clearness of presen- 
tation, and because the break at 8: 12 seems more decisive than any other in these 
chapters. In this chapter, too, the self-assertion of Jesus grows more positive and 
important, emerging more clearly from the confusion of the conflict. 


a. Jesus’ self-manzfestation as Light of the World provokes a discussion 
of the Zes¢zmony on which such a claim is based. Jesus defends His 
own character as wztzess,and claims His Father as another w7tness. 
Vs. 12-20. In the treasury, v. 20. 

6. Foreseeing the end of this determined and captious opposition, cf. 
7:33, 34, Jesus prophesies His own departure, and His opponents’ 
death in sin, vs. 21-30. 

(1) Their taunt, v. 22, leads Him to trace this difference in des- 
tiny to a decisive difference in moral character. Only 
belief in Him can save them, v. 24. This is only one of 
many judgments of them which He must speak, v. 26. Vs. 
22-27. 

(2) At the time of His ‘‘lifting up”, they shall come to under- 
stand who He is, cf. v.25. Result, many delzevers. Vs. 
28-30. 

c. Discourse on discipleship and spiritual sonship, vs. 31-50. 

(1) Discipleship, vs. 31-36. 

(a) On condition of abiding in His word, disciples shall 
know the ¢rutk and shall gain spiritual freedom, 
VS1305 32- 


426 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


(6) Developing the thought of spiritual freedom in con- 
nection with the idea of Sonship, Jesus declares 
the slavery of sin and the ability of the Son to 
make them sons, not slaves, vs. 34-36. 

Notre.—The Jews in v. 33 add the idea of descent or sonship to the idea of 
freedom. The contrast between Jesus’ spiritual idea and the people’s carnal 
thoughts is here brought out as strikingly as in chapter 6. The great spiritual 
truths of this section stand isolated, further elaboration being prevented by 
materialistic objections, and barren discussion on a lower plane. 

(2) Sonship, vs. 37-50. 

(a) Jesus acknowledges them Abraham’s physical seed, 
but asserts that their character shows another spirit- 
ual parentage, vs.37, 38. 

(6) They are not the spiritual children of Abraham, for 
they are uniike him in character, vs. 39, 40. 

(c) They are not the children of God, else they would 
love Jesus and receive His teaching, vs. 41-43. 

(@) They are the children of the devil, for they are 
morally like him, vs. 44-47. . 

(e) The Jews’ retort, which Jesus repudiates, leaving 
His glory to the great Fudge, vs. 48-50. 

d. Jesus’ promise of eternal /zfe, leads to a discussion of whom He makes 
Himself, vs. 51-58. 
(1) The promise, v. 51, cf. vs. 31, 32, 21, 12, is met by the Jews’ 
scornful objection of the universality of physical death, vs. 
Hr jSee 
(2) And the question, whom He makes Himself, 53b, vs. 53b-58. 

(a) Jesus replies that He needs not glorify Himself. 
Their God, Hzs Father, whom He knows and obeys, 
glorifies Him, vs. 54, 55- 

(6) Their Abraham rejoiced to see His day, v. 56. 

(c) In answer to their inverted question, He declares— 
‘* Before Abraham came into being, I am”, vs. 57, 

PS Ss iChat ooae 
e. Result: An attempted stoning,an open rupture (cf. 7 : 32, 45), v- 59 


Note.—Violence the last argument! cf. 9: 34. 


D. Jesus Mantfests HIMSELF AS THE Light OF THE World AND THE Goop 
SHEPHERD OF His FLock IN Union wiTH THE Father. 9:1—I10:42. 


NoTE oN TimEe.—Chapter 7:2 dates that chapter and probably chapter 8 
also, at the Feast of Tabernacles, Sept.-Oct. Chapter 10: 22 dates the following 
verses at the Feast of Dedication, December. Now 10: 27-29 connect ys. 22-42 so 
closely with 10: 14-18 that I cannot think that several months intervene. But 
10: 1-18 are evidently closely joined in thought with chapter 9. So, although the 
break at chapter 9:1 is not decisive, 1 am inclined to make 9 : I—10: 42 one section 
in time as well as in thought, and date it all about Dedication, December, A. D. 29, 
three or four months before the Crucifixion. This is confirmed by the seriousness of 
the rupture of 8:59, with which the comparatively mild tone of chapter 9 does not 
agree. This whole question raised at 9:1, shows how little our author was writing 
annals. 





AN ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL. 427 


1. The Szgz and its results. 

a. Jesus in the work, vs. 3, 4, of giving sight to the man born blind, 
manifests Himself as the Light of the World, v. 5. Vs. 1-7. 

6. Inthe questioning and investigation of it, which follow, after some 
wavering, v. 16, the Sign makes a clear cleavage, v. 34, between the 
believing, testifying, ever bolder, once blind man on the one side 
and the truth-resisting Pharisees and the worldly-wise parents on 
the other, vs. 8-34, cf. 1: 10-13. 

c. Jesus finds the outcast, who confesses his ée/zef and worships Him. 
He sees in this an instance of that judgment, one of the features of 
His mission, which ultimately sedarates the humble Jelzever with 
spiritual stg#¢, cf. Matt. 11:25, from the self-sufficient wise with their 
spiritual blimdness. With the latter, rejected /igh¢ increases guilt. 
Vs. 35-41- 

2. The consequent self-manzfestation. Jesus’ relation to the true Israel in contrast 
with the Pharisees. He is the Good Shepherd of His Flock. 10: 1-21. 

Note.—The idea of Zzght of the World is now dropped and the self-manzfes- 
tation connects itself with 9 :34-38. Here the idea of the sefaratzoz of believers, 
Jesus’ sheep, from the unbelieving world, to which Israel according to the flesh is 
reckoned, becomes dominant. In this outcast (9:34) blind man, Jesus sees the 
first member of the new community or flock, who has exfzrely and deczsively broken 
with the old Israel and the uzbeleeving world. The Shepherd seeks His persecuted 
sheep, and reveals His relation to the flock, which He foresees, v. 16, will not be 
made up only of those who have come out from the Jewish fold. 

a. The illustration. Contrast between a real shepherd and his relation 
to the sheep, and thieves and robbers; especially the real shepherd 
leads the sheep out through the door and they follow him, vs. 1-6. 

6. Interpretation from two entirely different points of view, vs. 7-18. 

(1) Jesus reveals Himself as the Door, the Door by which the 
sheep may go out of the fold into more abundant /zfe, vs. 
3, 4, 10, and through which alone true shepherds gain 
access to the sheep, v. 9, in contrast with thieves and rob- 
bers. Vs. 7-10. 

(2) Jesus is par excellence the Good Shepherd, vs. 11-18. 

(a) His characteristics in contrast with the hireling; 
especially, He lays down His /z/e for the sheep, 
vs. II-I5. 

(6) He has other sheep, not of the Jewish fold, whom 
He must (divine necessity) bring to make one flock 
with one Shepherd, v. 16. 

(¢) This death, v. 15, is voluntary and will issue in Jesus’ 
resurrection, according to the Father’s will, vs. 
17, 18. 

ce. Result of this disclosure—division among the Jews, vs. 19-21. 

3- The supplementary and final manifestation of His Uxzty with the Father, in 
answer to the Jews’ demand that He be plain about His Messzahship, 

10 : 22-42. 
Note.—Possibly this, instead of 3, should be E, co-ordinate with the self-mani- 
festations of chapters 5 and 6 in importance. Probably, however, it belongs to 
9: I—I0:21, as a final manifestation of His unity with the Father in such work as 





428 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


the healing of the man born blind. Vs. 26-29 have an intimate connection with 
ys. 1-18, and the ‘‘then” of v. 22 seems to connect quite closely. This ending 
reminds us continually of chapter 5. 
a. The demand of the Jews :—Tell us plainly if you are the Messiah, 
Vv. 24. 
b. The reply, vs. 25-30. 
(1) Jesus appeals to His former statements and works, v. 25. 
(2) Their unbelief due to their character, they are not of His 
sheep, v. 26. 
(3) The real reply. He is the Shepherd of the God-given flock, 
and gives them eternal /zfe, vs. 27-29. 
(4) In this redemptive work He and the Father are one, v. 30. 
c. As they are about to stone Him, Jesus remonstrates, especially 
answering their statement that He makes Himself God, vs. 31-38. 
(1) Their law justifies His assumption of the title, Son of God, 
Vs. 34-36. 
(2) The works prove'the mutual indwelling of the Father and 
the Son, vs. 37, 38. 
d. Result. They seek toseize Him. He escapes to Bethany, beyond Jor- 
dan, where many, who had heard John’s festimony, believe. Vs. 39-42. 


E. Jesus Manifests His Glory (v. 4) AS THE RESURRECTION AND THE Life IN 
WORD AND IN DEED, WITH RESULTS OF FINAL Cleavage. 11: 1-57. 

1. The historical introduction leading up to the manzfestation in word, 1 am 
the Resurrection and the ZL7/e, v. 25, 7. e., the Z7fe which conquers death 
for those who love and delzeve in Me. Vs. 1-32. 


Notre.—Chapter 5 reveals Jesus as the Source of Zzfe; chapter 6 as the 
sustainer of Zzfe; chapter 11 as the ZLzfe overcoming Death. Nor is there 
wanting a look forward. He who can thus conquer death is surely not conquered 
by it later. His death is voluntary, 10: 17, 18, and for others’ good. 

2. He proves Himself the Resurrection and the Zzfe by raising Lazarus. Vs. 33-44. 
a. Thesympathy of Jesus and His indignation at the woe and ruin wrought 
by death. Vs. 33-38a. 
&. The obstacles, vs. 38b-41a. 
c. The thanksgiving, vs. 41b-42. 
d. Jesus gives /zfe to the dead Lazarus, vs. 43, 44. 
3- The results. Vs. 45-57. 
a. Many delzeve, v. 45. 
4. The Sanhedrin, representing the Jewish nation, decides on Jesus’ death, 
vs. 46-53. 
Note.—This is a solemn and decisive climax in the growth of opposi- 
tion, exceeded only by 19: 14-16. 
c. Jesus retires to Ephraim, v. 54. 
Notre.—Ephraim on the East of the Jordan (?). 
d. The people are curious about the situation, which they know to be 
portentous, vs. 55-57. 
Note.—Vs. 55-57 constitute a transition passage which could just as well 
go with chapter 12, to which it is introductory in a sense. 


F. THE FINAL EFFECTS OF THE SELF-Manifestations or JESUS IN THE World. 
12 : I-50. 


AN ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL. 429 


NotTE.—This is a transition chapter, both a conclusion of the ministry and an 
- introduction to the passion, but more the former than the latter, and so placed here, 
though not strictly co-ordinate with A, B, etc. The note of cleavage, finality, 
judgment, makes the chapter solemn, though final victory is never more confidently 
predicted. It is, however, victory through death. 
1. In relation to the Disciples. The Feast at Bethany. Vs. 1-8. 

a. On the one hand, a group of loving disciples, braving the Sanhedrin’s 
edict, 11:53; Mary’s act expressing the acme of devoted Love, 
Vs. I-3. 

4. Onthe other hand, Judas, covetous and hypocritical, about to betray 
Him, vs. 4-8. 

2. Inrelation to the Multitude. The Triumphant Entry. Vs. 9-19. 

a. The historical situation. The people of Judea, curious and beginning 
to delzeve ; the Sanhedrin condemning even Lazarus to death, vs. 
g-II. 

4. The people, unable after all to understand His spiritual teaching, are 
still genuinely enthusiastic for Jesus as an earthly King, vs. 12, 13, 
17-19. 

c. Jesus openly manzfests Himself as Messianic King, vs. 14-16. 

3. In relation to the Gentiles. The Coming of the Greeks. Vs. 20-36a. 
Notre.—The Greeks seek Him, when the Sanhedrin has rejected Him. It is 
a prophecy that He shall be the Saviour of all men. 

a. The historical introduction, vs. 20-22. 

46. The coming of the Greeks shows that the hour has come and glorifies 
the Son of Man as universal Saviour, cf. v. 32, but only by the 
way of self-sacrifice and death, the road to glory for both Lord and 
servant, vs. 23-26. 

c. In view of death, Jesus’ soul is troubled, a foretaste of Gethsemane, 
vs. 27-29, but— 

d. The passion (and resurrection) will be; (1) a judgment of the world, 
(2) acasting out of Satan, (3) a drawing of all men to Himself. Vs. 
30-33- 

e. Jesus meets the Jews’ last theological question with a final, practical, 
solemn warning to walk while they have the Ligh, vs. 34-36a. 

4. In relation to the Nation. Final Judgment on a review of the Ministry. 
Vs. 36b-50. 

a. A judgment by the evangelist. The heads of the nation have finally 
rejected Christ in spite of His superabundant authentication in 
signus, and the intellectual conviction of some of them, vs. 36a-43. 

6. A judgment made up of sayings of Jesus. In rejecting Jesus, they 
have rejected God, for His message is wholly divineand not at all of 
Himself ; and in rejecting God, they have rejected eternal /zfe for 
themselves. Even though rejected, He will not be their judge in any 
personal sense, but the divine message which He has spoken will 
be. Vs. 44-50. 

III. 
THE FINAL SELF-Manizfestations OF THE Glory OF THE Word BECOME FLESH, 
Manifestations or His Love AND CONQUERING Life IN WORD, CHAPTERS 
13-17, AND DEED, CHAPTERS 18-20. 


430 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


A. Jesus Mantfests His Love anp Life in Union witH THE Father TO THOSE 


wHo Love Him AND, JOINED wiITH Him IN Life-Union, ARE NoW Sefa- . 


vated FROM THE World, WITH A CONSTANT VIEW TO THE FUTURE (ESPEC- 
IALLY THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE) OF HIMSELF AND His DISCIPLES. 13: I— 
17: 26. 
B. Jesus Manifests tHE Glory or His Love anp victorious Life IN VOLUN- 
TARY SURRENDER TO Death AT THE HANDS OF THE Unbelieving World; 
AND THE Glory oF His victorious Lzfe IN THE RESURRECTION, PRODUC- 
ING THE CLIMAX OF Belief. (18: 1—20: 31.) 
NotTre.—B is here put down for convenience of reference. For discussion of 
its place in the Analysis see note at chapter 18. 


INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTERS 13-20. Motives of the following scenes, 13: 1-3. 
1. The hour has come for Jesus to return to the Father, v. 1. 
Jesus’ love for His disciples, v. 1. 
3. This return accomplished through the treachery of Judas, and the opposition 
of the World and the Devil, v. 2. 
4. Jesus’ consciousness of His divine mission, dignity and destiny, v. 3. 


to 


A. Jesus Manifests His Love anp Life In Union WITH THE Father TO THOSE 
wuHo Love HIM AND, JOINED WITH Him IN Life-Union, ARE Now Separated 
FROM THE World, WITH A CONSTANT VIEW TO THE FUTURE (ESPECIALLY 
THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE) OF HIMSELF AND His DIscIpLes. 13: 1—17:26. 


1. Historical introduction to the words of Love and Life, chapters 14-17. 13 :4-38. 


a. The example of condescending Love in lowly service, and inculcation 
of it, vs. 4-17. 

&. Final sefaration even within the inner circle, vs. 18-30. The treach- 
ery of one is announced. A deep grief to Jesus’ Jove, and the traitor, 
undisclosed save to John, departs leaving Jesus alone with those 
who Jove Him. 

c. Some more or less detached sayings, arising from the occasion, vs. 31-38. 

(1) In view of His imminent glorzfcation and departure, now 
rendered certain by Judas’ withdrawal, Jesus exhorts His 
disciples to mutual Jove, cf. vs. 4-17. Vs. 31-35- 
(2) To Peter’s profession of Jove to death, Jesus opposes a 
prophecy of his denial, vs. 36-38. 
2. Jesus manifests His ove to the saddened hearts of His disciples, in words of 
comfort addressed to belzef. 14: I-31. 


Note.—Vinet called chapters 14-16 a divine confusion, but an attempt is here 
made to thread the maze. These are merely the most precious fragments of a simple 
childlike conversation, broken by question and answer. An easy external analysis 
may be constructed by making the breaks at the questions. We think that John 
selects and arranges the material on a profounder plan. 


a. Byand by they shall be with Him in His Father’s house, vs. 1-3. 
4. He Himself is the way to the Father, vs. 4-6. 
(1) For he who has seen Him has seen the Father, vs. 7-10a. 
(2) The proof is in His divine words and works, vs. 10b, 11. 
c. Because of His departure the disciples shall do greater works and shall 
prevail in prayer, vs. 12-14. 


AN ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL. 431 


d. Onthe ground of loving obedience, another Advocate will be given, 
who shall abide with them forever, vs. 15-17. 

e. He Himself will manifest Himself to them and abide with them, and 
Jove them and so will the Father. The condition is loving obed- 
ience. The Holy Spirit will explain all. Vs. 18-26. 

J. He gives them His peace and shows them reasons even for joy. His 
words have forearmed their fazthk. Vs. 27-31. 

3: Jesus manifests to His disciples the fulness of His love, as a /zfe-union. 15: 
I—16: 15. 

a. Under the figure of vine and branches, He declares that there exists 
a /7fe-union between Himself and His disciples on the basis of 
abiding. There will be pruning indeed, but also fruit. Vs. 1-6. 

4. Description, conditions and results of abiding, vs. 7-17. 


Notre.—Probably it is best to unravel the section by following this thread. 


(1) Description of abiding. 
(@) His words abide in them, v. 7. 
(6) They abide in His Jove, v. 9. 
(c) The measure of His Jove. As the Father hath Joved 
Him, v. 9, He lays down His life for them, v. 13. 
(2) Conditions of abiding. 
Loving obedience to Him, v. 10, and mutual Jove among 
themselves, vs. 12, 17. 
(3) Results of abiding. 
(a) Prevailing prayer, vs. 7, 16. (4) Much fruit, vs. 
8, 16. 
(c) His joy inthem, v. 11. (d@) They are His intimate 
friends, vs. 14-16. 

c. They are so much one with Him that they must share the World’s 
hate with Him, 15:18—16:15. Note. This might be analyzed as 
one of the results of abiding, 4 (3) above. 

(1) For youare not of the World, as I am not, vs. 18-21. 
(2) The World’s hate is inexcusable and gratuitous and has its 
root in opposition to the Father. The festimony of the 
Spirit and of the disciples will be given in the face of such 
a World. Vs. 22-27. 
(3) The World willexcommunicate and kill them, because of its 
ignorance of the Father and of Christ. His words are 
meant to forearm them in view of His departure. 16: 1-5. 
(4) But just on account of Jesus’ departure, the Spirit will come, 
vs. 6-15. 
(za) To convict the world, vs. 8-11. 
(6) To guide the disciples into all ¢rwvth, thus aiding 
them in their festzmony to the world, vs. 12-15, 
Cha ro 27. 
4. Closing words of hope and warning. Vs. 16-33. 
a. They shall see Him again with never ending joy, vs. 16-22. 
(1) The characteristics of that time, vs. 23-27. 
(a) There will be a new relation between them in which 
they shall pray to the Father in His name and re- 
ceive, VS. 23, 24. 


432 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


(4) A perfectly clear revelation of the Father and His 
love to the disciples, vs. 25-27. This leads up to— 
6. Jesus’ plain declaration about His coming into the world and return 
to the Father, v. 28, cf. 13 :3. 
(1) Accepted by the disciples with deléeving joy, vs. 29, 30. 
(a) But Jesus prophesies their defection, vs. 31, 32- 
c. The final word of peace and victory, v. 33- 
5. Jesus’ FINAL PRAYER. 17:1-26. 

Nore.—In this prayer, Jesus restates and breathes to the Father all the 
thoughts of chapters 14-16. It is, therefore, not an addendum, but the climax of 
the whole section. Much repetition demands an almost topical analysis, gathering 
similar thoughts under one head. 


a. Prayer for His own glorification. Glorify Thou Me, v. 1, with the 
glory which I had with Thee before the world was, v. 5. Vs. 1-5. 
(1) In order that I may glorify Thee, v. 1. 
(2) For, (a) the hour has come, v. 1. 
(6) This glorzfication necessary to His universal author- 
ity as life-giver, v. 2. 
(c) Hehas finished the works given Him, v. 4. 
TRANSITION VERSES, 6-8. 


Describing (1) the work Jesus had done on earth, vs. 6a and 8a, and 
so connecting with vs. 1-5, especially v. 4, and (2) the characteristics of 
the disciples for whom He is about to pray, vs. 6b, 7, 8b, and so con- 
necting with vs. 9-19. (2) is by far the major chord, and in any analysis, 
if choice must be made, vs. 6-8 must go with 4 rather than a. Still it is 
best to represent them just as they are, transition verses. These charac- 
teristics in (2) also constitute the ground of the subsequent petitions. 


6. Prayer for the disciples, vs. 9-19. 
(t) Grounds of the prayer. 
(a) They are mine and thine. They are my glory, vs. 
9,10. They are not of the world, vs. 14, 16. 
(6) Their need as in a hostile world, especially in view 
of my departure, vs. 11a (cf. v. 12), 13a, 14, 16. 
(2) Petitions. 
(a) Keep them in Thy name with a view to spiritual 
unity, V. IIb. 
(2) Keep them from the evil while in the wor/d, v. 14. 
(c) Consecrate them in Thy ¢ruth, v. 17, with a view to 
a mission like mine, vs. 18, 19. 
c. Prayer for those who shall de/éeve through their word, that they may 
be ove as we are, that the world may believe that Thou hast sent 
Me, vs. 20-23. 
d. Prayer for all whom Thou has given to Me, that they may be with Me 
in My glory. Vs. 25, 26 furnish the grounds of this petition, and 
restate the grounds of the whole prayer. Vs. 24-26. 


B. Jesus Manifests THE. Glory or His Love anp vicrorious Life IN VoL- 
UNTARY SURRENDER TO Death AT THE HANDS OF THE Unbelieving 
World; AND THE Glory or His vicTroRIous Life 1N RESURRECTION, 
PRODUCING THE CLIMAX OF: Belief. 18: 1—20: 31. 


AN ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL. 433 


Notre.—Chapters 18-20 appear at first sight to be merely historical. Here 
the strands traced through the Gospel seem to stop short. The words, /éfe, light, 
and glory disappear. Love, truth, belief, testimony, world, death are used, but do 
not dominate the narrative and often lose their characteristic significance. It 
seems as though the inner and higher thought had been abandoned for mere exter- 
nal narrative. This is, however, only seeming. Though the word, slory, dis- 
appears, the glory of Jesus shines through every scene. In dying for the people 
(18:14), He victoriously finishes the work of Jove given Him to do (19 : 28-30), and 
manifests His Jove for the World. Wis love for His own dominates the arrest and 
the trial before Annas, and shows itself on the cross (19:25-27). His calmness, 
courage, conscious innocence, voluntary submission and obedience to the will of 
God clearly understood by Him, the majesty of His character, in other words the 
glory of His victorious Zzfe or Spirit, manifest Him as Judge of His judges, and 
spiritual King of all men. In these chapters, the manifestation of Jesus as Mes- 
siah, so frequent in the earlier chapters (1 : 11, 20, 32-34, 41, 493 4:253.7:4139:22; 
II :27), again comes to the front as it naturally would in this historical situation. 
He appears as Messianic King for the Jews (18: 33-39; 19:3, 12-15, 19-21,—the 
King of Truth for the Romans, 18 : 36,37). As such He is rejected and murdered 
by them, and in the act they accomplish a final apostasy. He came unto His 
own and His own received Him not (1:11). This is the ultimate issue of wz- 
belief, and the condemnation, the judgment, of the World. Belief appears fitfully 
in 18 and 19, but only in contrast. Its full bloom is seen in 20. Arrest, trial, 
cross, burial are all lenses through which the glory of Jesus shines. Through 
them the Father begins to glorzfy the Son (12 : 31-33; 17:1). See remarks intro- 
ductory to chapter 18 in Westcott and Godet. 

Chapters 18 and 19 are sometimes made the fourth of five prime divisions of 
the Gospel, chapter 20 being the fifth. We shall argue strongly against such a 
separation of chapter 20 at that point. Whether a new prime division is to be 
made at chapter 18 depends largely on the point of view. If the view-point is 
merely historical and external, then the break will be made here, as the change 
from discourse to narrative, from the inner circle of love to the hating world is 
obvious enough. If, however, we allow the manifestations of Jesus to rule our 
analysis, we find in the whole section 13-20 the supreme manifestations of Jesus’ 
love, first in word and then in deed, an inner and an outer revelation. Nor are the 
contrasts between the attitudes of the Believing Company and the great hostile 
World, one full of love, the other of hate, to divide the sections, nay, they knit 
them together in one. So we make the third and final grand division 13-20, with 
a deep cleavage at 18. 


I. Jesus manifests the Glory of His Love and victorious Zzfe in voluntary surren- 
der to Death at the hands of the Unbelieving World. 18:1—19: 42. 


a. The story of the arrest, 18: 1-12, revealing— 5 
(1) Jesus’ perfect knowledge of the immediate future, vs. 4, 11. 
(2) His love protecting His disciples, vs. 4-9. 
(3) His calm superiority to His foes, vs. 4-6. 
(4) His voluntary surrender to death, according to the Father's 
will, vs. 10-12. 


6. The Jewish trial, including the denials of Peter, vs. 13-27, revealing— 
(1) Belzefand love, in Peter, at their lowest ebb (vs. 17, 18, 25-27) 
over against the faithfulness of the shadowy John, vs. 15, 16. 


434 THE GOSPEL OF ST.JOHN. 


(2) Unscrupulous wndelief craftily bent on murder, vs. 13, 14, 
19-24, and beginning to show violence, v. 22. 

(3) The openness and calmness of Jesus in reply, vs. 20, 21, 23. 

(4) His ove protecting His disciples, v. 19, cf. Jesus’ reply. 

c. The trial before Pilate, 18 : 28—19: 16, revealing— 

(1) The unbelief of the Jews, rejecting and demanding the death 
of their Messianic King, whose claim to be the Son of God 
they are forced to declare, 19:7, preferring a robber, 18 : 40, 
and finally apostatizing from Jehovah by denying any king 
but Cesar, 19:15. 

(2) The glory of Jesus in His words and His silences, His calm- 
ness in trial, and His patience in suffering. 

(a) His glory as spiritual King in the realm of ¢ruth, 
18 : 36, 37. 

(6) A King despite, indeed in the midst of, scourging 
and mockery, 19: 1-3, and shouts of hatred, 19:6. 

(c) As Pilate’s Master and Judge, 19: 11—(a@), (6) and 
(c)—in contrast with the vacillating and finally 
beaten governor. 

(d) As perfectly innocent of every wrong, 18:39; 19:4. 

(3) All this is in accord with God’s will and voluntary on Jesus’ 
part, 18:31, 323 19:11. . 

d. The crucifixion and death, 19: 17-37, showing— 

(1) How Jesus gets His rightful title on the cross, despite objec- 
tion by the Jews, vs. 19-22. 

(2) How all the incidents of the crucifixion fulfilled God’s will, 

i VS.'23)'24) 28, 30,37 

(3) Jesus, still master of the situation, Jovzng and beloved, vs. 
25-27. 

(4) Jesus finishing His God-given mission in suffering and 
death, vs. 17, 18, 28-30. 

NoTEe.—(1) (2) (4) all show defeat of the Jews and victory of 
Jesus even on the cross. 

e. The burial, 19: 38-42, showing— 

(1) How éelzef grows strong in the darkest hour. Belzevers 
come forth from the very ranks of the Sanhedrin to bury 
Him, vs. 38, 39- 

(2) The beginning of Jesus’ exaltation. He has befitting burial, 
taken down from the cross with loving hands, swathed 
with clean linen and costly spices, buried in the unpol- 
luted tomb by rulers of Israel. 


2. Jesus in Love manifests the Glory of His victorious Z7fe in Resurrection, pro- 
ducing the climax of Belzef. 20:1-31. This the last sign, 20: 30; cf. 2: 18-21. 
Notr.—Chapter 20 is to be taken as the second part of a division, 18-20. 18 
and 19 tell the climax of Unbelzef; 20 tells the climax of Belief. They are two 
halves of one whole. Still, through the halves ran many connecting strands. The 
note of victorious /z/e is not absent from 18-19, cf. the analysis. Even the cross 
witnesses the beginning of victory, and the burial is the first step in the exaltation. 
The glorification of Christ (12:28, 32; 13:31, 32; 17:1) includes both death and 
resurrection, and what Christ has joined in this word, we must not put asunder. 


AN ANALYSIS OF THE GOSPEL. 435 


Chapter 20 is the climax and crowning joy of the whole section beginning with 
chapter 13, which is so sombre with death for the most part. 


a. The facts of the Resurrection morning, 20: 1-18, showing— 

(1) How Peter and John saw the empty tomb and the grave 
clothes, and how John came at last to perfect Belzef, vs. 1-10. 

(2) How Mary’s sorrowing Love was turned into adoring and 
triumphant Belzef by Jesus’ appearance to her, vs. 11-18. 
See Professor Riggs’ Outlines for v. 17. 

é. The facts of the Resurrection evening, showing how the saddened and 
fearful Eleven came to Beléef, peace, joy, purpose and power through 
the appearance of the glorzjied Jesus to them, vs. 19-23. 

c. The facts of the meeting with Thomas, showing how the last doubter 
among the Eleven came in Belzef to utter the supreme declaration, 
‘*My Lord and my God”, through the appearance of Jesus to him, 
vs. 24-29. 

Note.—‘‘ My Lord and my God” is the climax of the Gospel, to which the 
author has led us up through its whole development. The disciples, 
through their experience with Jesus, come at last to believe not only 
that He whose glory they had beheld was the Word made flesh, 
I 214, but that ‘‘In the beginning was the Word, andthe Word was 
with God, and the Word was God”, 1:1. So the Gospel at the 
end returns to its beginning, and all that lies between is to be inter- 
preted in view of this beginning and this end. 


Epr1LoGvuE.—Final statement of the purpose of the Gospel; Belzefin Jesus 
as the Messzah, the Son of God, and through Belief, Life in His 
name, Vs. 30-31. 

Note.—In these verses we find again the characteristic and significant 
words and phrases in profusion. 


APPENDIX. 21: 1-25. 

Notre.—This is evidently, cf. 20: 30, 31, an appendix, an afterthought, and has 
its motive in the correction of the false report that John should not die before the 
Second Coming, 21:21-23. It seems at first purely historical, like chapters 18-20, 
and like them, lacks almost entirely John’s significant and characteristic words. 
Has it then no inner meaning, such as we have found in the Gospel hitherto? The 
presumption is all the other way. The motive in writing was the correction of a 
false report, that correction led to the narration of the conversation from which the 
report started, and that conversation called up the scene and the circumstances. 
This scene and Christ’s words did not merely seem significant to John; like all the 
others recorded in the Gospel, they were actually full of deep meaning. So the 
fishing scene is more than the annals of a miraculous catch, (cf. L. 5: 1-11, 
especially v. 10), and the other scenes likewise. To be sure, we lose the strands 
which run through the Gospel. Both Undelief and Belief have reached their 
climax ; the one in apostasy, the other in clear insight into the deity of Christ, and 
there is nothing more to be said in those lines. The scenes of chapter 21 deal 
with the future work of the church. 


1. The fishing scene, vs. 1-14, manifesting, v. 1,— 
a. The presence of the risen Lord with His disciples in their 
daily toil. 


436 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


4. His loving direction of their labors to a successful issue, 
rents up ca 
c. His gracious supply of their need. 

2. The reinstatement of Peter, his work and his end (cf. his boasts, 
13: 36-38 and his denials, 18: 15-27), manifesting the Lord’s. 
loving, yet thorough dealing with Peter’s sin, and His gracious. 
restoration of him. Deeply showing the work of the church, 
the perils it must encounter, and its one duty of following Jesus, 
VS. 15-19. 

3- How the false report about John arose. Its correction. Vs. 20-23. 

Final attestation by another hand (?), vs. 24, 25. 





Note.—In finishing this analysis, involving a careful review of the inner 
thought and construction of the whole Gospel, I cannot refrain from declaring my 
increased belief in its trustworthiness as history. Recognizing to the full its phil- 
osophic view-point, I have ever found the historical situation impregnating, modify- 
ing, interrupting the philosophical trend. This is just what would naturally occur 
in writing with the design of presenting the inner meaning of a real history. 


FREDERICK L. ANDERSON. 
July 1, 1904. 


SUGGESTIVE STUDIES AND REFERENCES. 
BY REV. CLARK S. BEARDSLEE, D. D., 


PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL DOGMATICS AND ETHICS, HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL 


SEMINARY, HARTFORD, CONN. 


CHAPTER I. 


1. THE Worp. Find out His qualities here. Compare ch. 17. 

2. Tue FLesu. Trace out its fellowship with us. Compare the sympathy 
and help in chs. 5, 6, 9, 11, etc. 

3- THe REVELATION. To find its content weigh and open the words *‘ glory”, 
** grace”, ‘“‘truth”, the ‘‘ Father declared”. Trace parallels to these themes in 
CH5—3,,4,,5, 6,13, 17. 

4. THE SonsHip—‘‘ made sons of God”. Study the agent, the birth, the 
faith, the life. Compare with this gift of sonship, the gift of ‘‘ eternal life” in 
ch. 6. 

5- JoHN THE WirTNEss. His traits. His task. His fortune. Compare chs. 
Bio22-36)505 - 35. 

6. JouN’s Testimony. Christ’s enduement, v. 32. Christ’s work: bearing 
world-sin, v. 29: baptizing with the Holy Ghost, y. 33. Compare chs. 3: 14-16; 
10115 12:32, and 7: 38, 39; 16:7. 

7. THe TRAGEpDy in vs. 10,11. Trace its development in chs. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 
10, and its awful end in ch. 19. 


CHAPTER II. 


1. CuHrRist’s SociAL FELLowsuHiIp. See other instances in chs. 6, 11, 13, 21. 
Trace out the strength of this social impulse in Christ. 

2. THe MAKING oF THE WATER INTO WINE. Study this as an illustration 
ofch.1:3. Find other illustrations in chs. 5,6,9, 11. Study here the meaning 
of His claim to be the ‘‘ Bread of Life”, ch. 6, and of the fact of His resurrection. 

3- Tue PAssover,\. 13. Study meaning of Christ’s attendance at Jewish 
feasts. Compare chs. 5:1; 6:4; 7:23; 10:22; 12:12. 

4- CLEANSING THE TEMPLE. Note how this act honors the temple. What 
was Christ’s aim? What did thetemple mean 2? How deep is the contrast between 
trade for gain, and worship with prayer and sacrifice? 


CHAPTER III. 


I. Srupy NicopEMus. He is curious, but dull: a teacher, but crude; a 
leader, but inert; religious, but unbelieving: inquiring, but obdurate. Compare 
and contrast him with other characters in the book. 

2. THe Worip. Gather all that is said of it in this chapter. Trace the 
same study through the Gospel. 

3- Gon’s Girt, v. 16. Search out God’s part in providing Christ, especially 
ch. 17. 

4- THE Sprrit-BirtH, v. 5. Show connection of this with teaching about 


437 


438 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


‘living’ water in ch. 4, bread of ‘‘life” in ch. 6, the spirit-fountain in ch. 
7:37, etc. 

5. Joun’s WITNESS, vs. 22-36. John’s ministry. Christ’s primacy. John’s 
moral kinship with Christ. 


CHAPTER IV. 


1. DESCRIBE THIS WoMAN. Coy, cold, narrow, shallow, crude, pliant. 
Compare and contrast her with other women in this Gospel. 

2. STUDY INTO THE SAMARITAN-JEWISH Feup. Their view, the Jew’s view, 
Christ’s view, their changed view, its real roots. Find signs of kindred narrow- 
ness and enmity in this Gospel. 

3- Curist’s BREADTH, v. 42. Define this carefully here. Cite signs of it 
elsewhere. 

4. CuHRIsT’s SoLITUDE. None could appreciate His love and zeal, v. 27. 

5- THE Woman’s Sin. Her shyness. . Christ’s sharpness. Find other sim- 
ilar instances. 

6. SprriruaAL Worsuip oF ONE Spirit Gop. Contrast false, unspiritual 
religion in chs. 2, 3, 5, 6, 9. 

7- SOWING AND REAPING. Division of labor. Unison in joy. Compare ch. 
3 : 28-30. 


CHAPTER V. 


1. A Case oF EXTREME NEED. Compare other sorts of need in chs. 
6, 9, II. 

2. JewisH SABBATH Ru es. A lifeless, inhuman code. Compare signs of 
cold formality in chs. 2, 3, 6, 9, 18 : 28. 

3. Tue Conrest. Define closely the charge. Trace carefully the defence 
and counter charge. Study out the power of the argument in the words Father, 
Son and Love. Compare other contests in chs. 8, 10 and 18. 

4. Scan Christ’s evidence, vs. 31-39. Detect the xa¢ure of His proofs. Com- 
pare the nature of His arguments in chs. 7, 8 and ro. 


CHAPTER VI. 


1. Study the physical need and the physical supply, comparing similar 
_ instances in chs. 2, 4, 5,9, 11. Note how fundamental and proper all these cases 
are. 

2. Study the parallel spiritual need and the spiritual supply, comparing chs. 
3, 4, 11 and 16. 

3. Take the outside measure of Christ’s own consciousness in this chapter 
noting specially v. 51, and marking his repetitions. Trace this same consciousness 
in chs. 2, 3, 4, 5, etc: 

4. Make special study of the arguments on both sides in thischapter. Define 
sharply all the prime postulates. What was to be proven on Christ’s side? What 
was the final evidence? Study similarly the arguments in chs. 3, 5, 9, 11, 21. 

5. Frame briefest possible definition of Christ’s worth and work in terms of 
this chapter. Then cite as many synonyms for this as the chapter will yield. 


CHAPTER VII. 


1. THE UNTAUGHT TEACHER, v. 15. Look into Christ’s absolute originality. 
See this in chs. 5, 6, 12, 16, 18. . 


SUGGESTIVE STUDIES AND REFERENCES. 439 


2. THe True Trescuer, y. 18. Look into Christ’s emphasis on genuineness, 
verity, fidelity to His commission. See this fine and jealous and supreme appreci- 
ation of Truth in the talk with Pilate, and in the parables of the ‘‘ true” vine and 
the ‘‘ good” Shepherd. 

-3. THE BoLtp TEACHER, Vv. 14, VS. 25, 26. 


€hs- 10,11, 18: 
4. THE EXHAUSTLESS AND SATISFYING TEACHER, v. 37. Compare ch. 4, 


Mark this same fine courage in 


14-16. 

5. THE Divine TEACHER, v. 16, vs. 28, 29. 
Gospel of Christ’s claim to speak for God. 

6. OxspuURATE Pupits, v. 47. Note their presence and attitude in chs. 5, 6, 8, 


Find signs throughout the 


g, 10. 
CHAPTER VIII. 


STUDY INTO THE EMPHASIS UPON ‘‘ TRUTH” IN THIS CHAPTER. 
The True Light, v. 12. Note the phrases, light of the ‘‘ world”, 
light of ‘‘ life”. Weigh them. 
6. The True Witness, v. 14. Look into the argument here. 
c. The True Judge, v. 16. Test the link of logic here also. 
d. The True Prophet, v. 28. Note the ground here. 
e. The True Emancipation, vs. 31, 32. Here is the core of this chapter, 
and the well-head of all good morals. 
f. The True Son of God, vs. 54, 55. See how ultimate an avowal this 
is in this whole argument. 
In all these assertions see how sure, and plain, and strong, and calm the 
Master is. Then mark the relation of these qualities to this ‘‘ Truth”. 


I. 


ad. 


2. STUDY INTO THE STATE AND PLIGHT oF His ENEMIES. 


a. They are in Darkness and Ignorance of Vital Truth, v. 19. 
6. They are in Error, v. 13, vs. 52, 53- 
c. They are in Sin of Unbelief, vs. 24, 46; Murder, v. 40. 
d. They are in Bonds, v. 34. 
e. They are in Hopeless Doom and Guilt, v. 21. 
f. They are of the Lineage of the Lord of Murder and Lies, v. 44. 
In all this chapter see how set, and hard, and blind, and bad these antagonists 
are. 
3- See inthis chapter the typical and final contest. 
truth vs. lies, love vs. hate, sure testimony vs. unbelief, Christ vs. Satan. 


how the same battle is set in chs. 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 18. 


It is light vs. darkness, 
Note 


CHAPTER IX. 


I. STupy Curist HERE. 

His Insight, v. 3. Here is a glint of a real philosophy of lite. 
Read 8: 12, the words occasioned by the visit of the Greeks in ch. 
12, and the conversation with Pilate in the light of this. 

6. His courage, v. 7. Braving sacred, religious traditions. 
c. His mingled Judgment and Tenderness, vs. 35-41. 

2. STUDY THE BLIND Man. 

a. His condition before the healing—a blind beggar in the Orient. 
Weigh each word. Feel his sad plight. 


a. 


440 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


6. Mark the ontburst of his latent manhood after the healing. This is 
splendid. Ponder what it means. 

c. Try to conceive his subsequent history. 

3 STupy THE PARENTS, noting their cautious fear, how it prevails above 
parental solicitude and joy. 
4. THe Puarisres. 

a. Their bondage to rude rules. 

4. Their ideas about Christ. 

c. Their excommunication of the man. Trace the arguments. Esti- 
mate their strength, their futility. Define their views of character, 
of authority, of government. 

d. Outline carefully and in detail Christ's view of them. 

5. Compare chs. 5 and 11 along these lines. 


CHAPTER X. 


1. THE SHEPHERD PARABLE, VS: I-21. - 
a. The Shepherd’s duties: to guard, feed, save. 
b. The Shepherd’s traits: watchful, faithful, bold, good, sacrificial, 
familiar. 
c. The Shepherd’s method: folding, calling, leading, knowing each 
one. 
d. The Shepherd’s cost and reward. 
e. The Shepherds counterfeit: heedless, thievish, sly. timid, strange, 
destructive. ; 
yf. Special study of Christ as Shepherd: His lordliness, His devoted- 
ness, His defamation, His honor from God. 
The sheep—making your description correlate carefully with that of 
the Shepherd; their need of protection, guidance, etc., and their 
peril from neglect, attack, etc. 


Yg 


2. Show how the scheme of this parable comprehends the entire career and 
ministry of Christ. This whole Gospel is here in a beautiful miniature. 
3- See how the whole is condensed again in vs. 22-39. Spoken very likely at 
a different time. 
CHAPTER \XI. 
A Srupy or Curist’s SpLeNpDID MAstery of all things in the sickness, 
death and resurrection of Lazarus. 
‘an His mastery in interpretation of meaning of disease, v. 4. 
His mastery of the order of events in delay, v. 6. 
His mastery of peril in a calm daring, vs. 8-16. 
His mastery evinced in majestic self-consciousness, y. 25. 
His mastery of the future in His promise, v. 23. 
His mastery of others in authority, vs. 39, 40. 
' His mastery in supplication, v. 41. 
His mastery over death in resurrection, vs. 43, 44: 
His mastery over the Sanhedrin, driving them to desperation, vs. 
aiea3: 
Jj. His mastery of the final crisis by flight and hiding, v. 54- 


mh PR AS ROSA 


' See how in this chapter Christ forced and yet held in full control the Phari- 
sees’ fear and hate. Compare chs. 5, 10, 12: 12-19. 


SUGGESTIVE STUDIES AND REFERENCES. 44i 


CHAPTER XII. 


1. THE MINGLING OF HONEY AND GALL IN CuRIsT’s LOT, vs. I-11; anointed, 
quarreled over, hunted. See how their enmity is the outgrowth of His friendliness. 
Study His companionableness. It is ideal. Watch how He cherished friendship. 
But see how hate smites Him in the midst of His joy. His lot was always a medley. 


1. THe TRIUMPHANT ENTRY, vs. 12-19. 
a. Mark its engaging gentleness. 
4. Note its matchless daring. 
c. Estimate its compelling energy. 
d. Study the act as the culmination of all the series of events from the 
sending of the Seventy. 
e. Discern how resistlessly it bears on towards the cross. 
3. THe REMARKS AT THE VISIT OF THE GREEKS, vs. 20-36. Here again is 
profound philosophy. 
a. Its occasion—a visit from aliens. 
Its statement in parabolic form, v. 24. 
Its illustration in Christ, vs. 32-33. 
Its application to disciples, vs. 25. 26. 


Its conflict, v. 31. 
Its rewards—fruit. v. 24; life, v. 25; fellowship, v. 26; honor, v. 26; 
glory, v. 28; world conquest, v. 32. 
Here again is the whole Gospel in brief. Show this true. 


b. 
Cc. 
d. 
e. Its agony, v. 27. 
Te 
iy: 


a 
CHAPTER XIII. 
An ALL-RounpD Stupy or Love. 


1. THE BLESSEDNESS OF ITS HUMBLE MINISTRIES—The feet washing. Note 
the contrasts here in the petty jealousies over scant worthiness in the disciples, and 
the easy humbling of a mighty dignity in Christ. Keep in sight the near-impend- 
ing sacrifice and ascension, vs. I-20. 

2. THe AwruL Havoc or Love’s ABSENCE—The outrageous betrayal, vs~ 
21-30. Study into its easy action, its essential abhorrence (what are its marks?) 
and its Satanic inspiration. Can you trace its infection still? 

3. THE VaLipity oF Love as the new and final counsel and command of 
Christ, vs. 31-38. 

a. Study it in view of Christ’s glory, vs. 31, 32. 

6. Study it in view of Christ’s absence, v. 33. 

c. Study its adequacy for world-witness, v. 35. 
Compare this paragraph with ch. 17. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


1. Minn THE GREAT THEMES. God, Christ, Godin Christ, Christ in God, 
the Holy Spirit, the mansions, prayer, peace, life, the greater works, the mansion- 
ing together of Father and Son and disciple. 

Study each theme searchingly, e. ¢.: 

2. Tue Discrete. His obedience, his love, his prayer, his insight, his works, 
his earthly tranquillity, his heavenly home, his companionship with God and Christ 
and the Holy Spirit. 

3. THe Hoty Spirir. His full equipment to do Christ’s work, his mission 


442 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


of solace and defence and tuition and grace, his wealth of knowledge and goodness, 
his deep indwelling, his respect for Christ. 
So explore all these themes. Full tides abound in this chapter. 
CHAPTER XV. 
1. THE VINE. VS. I-17. 
a) Study until you can name and sharply define each far? of this para- 
ble. 
6) Study until you can see what Christ was a¢, what was His aim, 
what it all means. 
c) Study until you warm with admiration of Christ’s sk. 
Vs. 18-23. 
a) THe Worvp. Ignorant of God, hating God, hating Christ, hating 
Christ’s elect, but stripped of all excuse. Study in particular into aze, its 
nature, its genius, its propensity, its fruitage. 
6) Curist. Study His deep insight, His plainness, His innocence, 
His intrepidity. Try to sense His poise and beauty of character. See how 
all His radiance is heightened by all the world’s abhorrent iniquity. 
c) Trace out how other scenes in this Gospel brought out just these 
fine qualities. 


tw 


CHAPTER XVI. 
1. Vs. 1-16. 

a) Get an outline of Christ’s full prevision. 

6) Mark His frankness in disclosing to His band their coming lots 
excommunication, offense, death. 

c) His careful thoughtfulness, to forewarn, fortify, provide, re-assure, 
adapt teachings to capacity and needs. 

d) His triumphant calm. His ways are orderly and timely; He 
handles like a real master the ultimates—righteousness, sin, judgment, 
faith, Satan, God; He makes full unfolding of the Spirit’s work. 

2. Now see how these features unfold through the rest of the chapter. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


Note Curist’s ArTirupE—eyes lifted up to heaven. 

His Locic—See how He argues. 

His Facts. List His statements. ‘They constitute most of the prayer. 
His Petitions. Get them exactly. They are surprisingly few. 

His Momentum. Try to measure the passion, the eagerness, the pres- 
sure, the onset of the prayer. 

6. His Fairu. Just what was Christ trying and expecting to do? 

7. His Ovurtoox. ‘Try to get His range. What was in His eye? Take the 
girth of these words: ‘‘truth”, ‘‘ belief”, ‘‘life”, ‘‘ world”, ‘‘evil”, “glory”, 
those little words ‘‘ in” and ‘‘ one” in v. 23. 

8. Describe the inner and outer aspect of this prayer. Is it mostly radiant, or 
does it stand in shadows? Are its inner deeps tranquil or troubled ? 


mrp WwW WH HM 
cae Tee ey |S 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


1. THe ARREsT. Measure all the indignity of that ‘‘binding”. Study 
Christ’s majesty and beauty, and pity and patience in it. Look within His mind. 
Find His point of view. What would He be thinking of the manacles, of the 
soldiers, of the Jews, of the disciples, of Himself, of God? 


SUGGESTIVE STUDIES AND REFERENCES. 443 


2. Petrer’s DentaLt. There were reasons for this. Try to find them out. 
What was Peter’s philosophy, point of view, standard of judgment? 

3. BrrorRE THE HicH Priest. Name the essentials of a Proper, judicial 
procedure. Did the high priest Jretexd to recognize them? In what respect was 
he unfair? 

4. BEFORE PILATE. 

a) Study that little quarrel between Pilate and the Jews. 

6) Explore that conversation between Pilate and Christ. What was 
the secret of Christ’s art here? What main idea was in Pilate’s mind? 

c) How many qualities of ‘‘ Truth” can you name? 

d) How many qualities of Christ can you name? 

e) How many qualities of Pilate can you name? 


CHAPTER XIX. 


1. Make as fulla description as you can of Christ with the crown of thorns, 
or while being scourged. 
How manzfest was Christ’s innocence ? 
What different reasons can you suggest for Christ’s silence? 
See if you can explain fwlly the High Priest’s rage. 
Describe the weakness and the power of a ‘‘ throng”. 
List a/Z Christ’s burdens on the cross. 
The soldiers—how does a soldier’s life in arms affect his manhood? 
See how far you can define ‘*‘ death” as endured by Christ. 
ge Write a contrast of the two scenes: the Crucifixion, and the Burial of 
Christ. 


mOn~arI Au + WwW WwW 


CHAPTER XX. 


Ie Name the traits displayed by the disciples at the tomb—as eagerness, sor- 
row, love, ignorance, wonder, timidity, honesty, confusion, unbelief. Probe each. 

2. Study these things togetker—the tomb, its order, the angels, the fact of 
the resurrection. Find out the zature of this whole transaction. 

3- Hold together the risen Lord’s familiarity and majesty, His triumph and 
tenderness, His authority and companionship. Look deeply into each. Bring 
them all to blend. 

4. Note Christ’s themes—the Father, His brethren, the ascension, His 
wounds, His own identity, the mission of the Spirit, sin, faith, forgiveness, 
peace. 


CHAPTER XXI. 


1. THe Mornine MEAL. 
@) Dwell upon the disciples’ futile toil. 
6) Ponder the Master’s efficiency. 
c) Weigh Christ’s concern for men’s bodily needs. Cite other cases. 
d@) Study the Master at the meal. Did He eat? How would you char- 
acterize, in general, Christ’s view of bodily comforts? 
2, THE SEARCHING OF PETER. 
a) Contrast the Christ and the Peter of this chapter with the Christ 
and the Peter of ch. 18. 
6) Study Peter's pliability, caution, devotion. 
c) Study Christ’s insight, insistence, frankness, supremacy. 
d) Study love—its nature, its.value, its energy, its efficiency. 


*THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN. 
BY REV.HENRY G. WESTON, D. D., LL. D., 


PRESIDENT OF CROZER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, CHESTER, PENN. 


The Gospel of John is the Gospel of the manifestation of Christ. The opening 
sentences glow with that ineffable Light which in the Holy of Holies overhung the 
Mercy Seat between the cherubim; we behold ‘‘ His glory, the glory as of the only 
begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (1:14). John begins where the 
other evangelists end, with the rejection of Christ by the Jewish people: ‘He 
came unto His own and His own received Him not” (1:11). Throughout the 
Gospel the Jews and Jesus are arrayed against each other in uncompromising 
hostility. In the Synoptic Gospels all Christ’s intercourse with His disciples 
until His last journey to Jerusalem is designed to answer the question, Who is the 
Son of Man (Matt. 16:15; Mark 8:29; Luke 9:20)? The nature and person of 
Christ as the Son of the living God having been revealed, He announces for the 
first time the method of redemption, by His death, burial and resurrection (Matt. 
16:21; Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22). But John’s Gospel begins with the declaration 
of Christ’s divine character and atoning work; in the first chapter He is the Lamb 
of God that taketh away the sin of the world (1:29); on Him the angels of God 
are ascending and descending (1:51); He declares the character and secret actions 
of Nathanael (1: 47-50); He needs not that any should tell. Him of man, for He 
knows what is in man (2:25); He is the Son of Man who came down from Heaven 
and is in Heaven (3:13). The first miracle which John records is the Marriage 
feast (2:11); the first public act the cleansing of the Temple (2:16); the first dis- 
course the revelation of the Heavenlies (3 :12);—all pertaining to an order of 
things which comes only at the close of the other Gospels. In Christ’s discourses 
to the Jews, in His prayer recorded in chapter 17, in the account of the crucifixion, 
the point of view is that of a finished work. The death on the cross is not so 
much the process of dying as the results of death; it is not defeat, but victory. 
In the other Gospels, when Christ speaks to His disciples of His approaching 
decease, He emphasizes His humiliation and suffering, His delivery to the Gentiles 
(Matt. 16:21; 20:18; Luke 18:32); here His death is voluntary, ‘‘ No man 
taketh My life from Me but I lay it down of Myself” (10:18); it inheres in the re- 
lation He has assumed, ‘‘I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd giveth his 
life for the sheep” (10:11 ); it isthe reason for His Father’s special love, ‘‘*There- 
fore doth My Father love Me because I lay down My life that I may take it again” 
(10:17, 18); and it results in universal appreciation, ‘‘ And I, if I be lifted up 
from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (12:32). In this Gospel there is no 
account of the Transfiguration with its Moses and Elias, the encouragement for 
the coming Calvary. There are here no apprehensions of the cross, no Gethsem- 
ane; no angels strengthening Him. When the band of men and officers ap- 
proach Him in the garden to apprehend Him, when He says, ‘‘I am He,” they go 
backward and fall tothe ground (18:6). Throughout the whole scene of the 


* This and the following articles were contributed for the series in the press. One or two of these were 
received after the series were concluded. 


444 


THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN. 445 


crucifixion the same wonderful character is preserved. He does not receive testi- 
mony from men; no company of women bewail and lament Him; no Judas con- 
fesses, ‘‘I have betrayed the innocent blood”; no Pilate’s wife says, ‘‘ Have thou 
nothing to do with this just man”; no dying malefactor testifies, ‘‘ This man has 
done nothing amiss”; no Roman centurion says, ‘‘ Truly this man was the Son 
of God”. And He who needed no help or sympathy or testimony from men or 
angels would have none from nature; in this Gospel we read nothing of rocks 
rending, or of the earth quaking, or of the darkness covering the land. From the 
cross is heard no cry, no prayer, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken 
Me?”—“‘ Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit”. He speaks but three 
words—the first, as if on a quiet death-bed, provides for His mother; the second is 
a fulfilment of Scripture; the third is the shout of the conqueror. 

The final Gospel is the personal Gospel. The divine persons, Father, Son and. 
Spirit, are presented in their order, each in His distinct sphere and each in His 
relation to the others. The personality of Christ, the personal character of the 
relations He sustains are everywhere emphasized. He speaks rather than acts 
(8:12). His fundamental assertion is, ‘‘ l am—I am the Life, the Truth, the Way. 
the Vine, the Door, the Shepherd, the Resurrection”. Few miracles are recorded, 
and the discourses are occupied with the nature of God, the essential oneness of 
Christ with the Father, the mystical union of Christ with His people. In the per- 
son of Christ all things find their fulfilment; not only the predictions of the Old 
Testament but the Old Testament itself; the Shekinah and the tabernacle (1:14) ;: 
the temple (2:19-21); the ladder on which the angels of God ascend and descend 
(1:51); the serpent in the wilderness (3:14); the manna (6:32); the paschal lamb 
(1:20; 19:36); in Him all nature finds its fulfilment—life (1:4) ; light (1:9) ; water 
(4:10); bread (6:50); all offices and relationships—the vine (15:1); the door 
(10:7); the shepherd (10:14); the way (14:6). The reason and vindication of all 
Christ’s actions are found in Himself. The eight miracles in this Gospel are, with 
a single exception (4:46-53), self-moved—wrought without any request from those 
to be benefitted, and in that exception the cure transcends the faith of the peti- 
tioner. In the discussion on the Sabbath there is no argument, as in the synop- 
tics, from David or thetemple, or the conduct of man: His one justification is, 
‘*My Father worketh until now, and I work” (v.17). In the one thought of 
belief in Christ center all the requirements of God (6: 28, 29). A personal rela- 
tion toa personal Being comprises all that is necessary for perfect conduct and 
character; this meets every possibility of the soul (1:4); satisfies every desire 
(4:14); fills every capacity for time and eternity (6:35). The personality of the 
thought moulds the style of John ; it shows itself in the avoidance of abstractions,. 
in the absence of all reference to law as now in force, in the continual recurrence: 
of the personal pronoun, in the precision and accuracy with which words are used,. 
in the continual repetition of words which this precision requires, in the ever- 
recurring antithesis, in the scrupulous restriction of terms. Believers, e. g., are 


the children of God ; only Christ is the Son of God. 
It is the universal Gospel, ‘‘All things were made by Him and without Him 


was not anything made that was made” (1:2); He ‘‘lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world” (1:9); He is ‘‘the Lamb of God which taketh away the 
sin of the world” (1:29). ‘‘The hour is coming in which all that are in the 
graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth” (v. 28). 

The final Gospel is the Gospel of the essential and eternal. There is here no 
Sermon on the Mount, with its explanation of law; no Sermon on the Plain, with 
its ethical directions. In the conversations with Nicodemus (3: 1-21), and with 


446 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


the woman of Samaria (4:7-26), in the discussions and controversies with the 
Jews (chs. 6-10), in the farewell discourses with the disciples (chs. 12-16), 
there is no mention of duties which are by their nature restricted to this life. 
Directions with regard to conduct found in all the other Gospels disappear; the 
heavenly, the spiritual, and eternal are the subject of discourse. The church is 
viewed in the same light. Christ institutes no ordinances, ordains no apostles, 
appoints no officers. He breathes on the disciples the Holy Spirit which is to be 
the eternal life of the church (20:22). The Gospel begins with the declaration of 
the intrinsic nature of Christ, with His relation on the one hand to the uncreated 
and on the other to all that comes into being. The antagonisms are the ultimate 
and permanent—light and darkness, life and death. The relationships are not his- 
toric, but ideal (8:39). Times and places disappear ; God is Spirit, and is wor- 
shipped in spirit and in truth (4: 21-24); while Christ returns to the glory which 
He had with the Father before the world was (17:5). 


4 


THE MOST REMARKABLE GOSPEL. 
BY REV. DOREMUS A. HAYES, PH. D., S. T. D., LL. D., 


PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS, GARRETT BIBLICAL INSTITUTE, 


EVANSTON, ILLINOIS. 


The Fourth Gospel gives us no adequate biography of Jesus. It is too smalla 
book. My Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson has 1824 pages. The Life of Phillips 
Brooks on my library shelves has 1596 pages, and the Life of Henry Drummond 
534 pages. The Life of our Lord by the Apostle John occupies less than 30 pages 
in my Revised Version; and yet John says that if all had been written which might 
have been written. the world itself could not contain all the books covering the 
theme. Evidently much has been left out. Some of the omissions are most 
remarkable. 

John omits the whole record of the first thirty years of the life of Jesus, to 
begin with. He gives us no genealogy, no account of the annunciation, and he 
never suggests that there was such a thing as an immaculate conception. He tells 
us nothing about the infancy and youth of our Lord, nothing about His develop- 
ment of mind and soul, His early environment and teaching. These were the 
most important years of His life to Jesus Himself, but John says nothing about 
them ! 

Jesus meets John the Baptist at the Jordan, but the evangelist has told us noth- 
ing about the early life or ministry of the forerunner, as he tells us nothing about 
his later imprisonment and death! 

There are some very capital events in the life of our Lord, which we would 
think any biographer would not fail to mention, as, for example, the temptation in 
the wilderness, the transfiguration, the institution of the Lord’s Supper, the Geth- 
semane agony, and the ascension. John tells us about none of them! 

There are no children in this Gospel, and there are no scribes, and no lepers, 
and no publicans! 

There is no casting out of demons in this Gospel. His enemies say of Jesus, 
‘““He hasademon”. But this unreal, falsely-charged, demoniacal possession is 
the only one recognized or mentioned in this book. 

There are no eschatologies in this Gospel, such as we find in the Synoptics. 
Here, instead of their predictions of the Parousia, we have the promises of the 
Paraclete. The coming of the Comforter is substituted for the coming of the 
Judge and King. 

There are no proverbs in this Gospel, and there are no parables! Jesus acts 
parables here, but He does not narrate them. 

The Greek words for repentance and faith are not found in this book. These 
words represent chief themes in the other Gospels. John never uses the terms! 

How could anybody write a Life of Jesus that would be of any account and 
omit all mention of the temptation, transfiguration and ascension. of the demons, 
and the lepers and the publicans, and the parables? Here isa most remarkable 
Gospel without any of these things. 

Yet Origen said, ‘‘ This Gospel is the consummation of the Gospels, as the 


447 


448 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Gospels are of all the Scriptures”. And Luther said, ‘‘ This is the unique, tender, 
genuine, chief Gospel, far preferable to the other three. * * * Shoulda tyrant 
succeed in destroying the Holy Scriptures, and only a single copy of the Epistle to 
the Romans and the Gospel according to John escape him, Christianity would 
be saved”. Biedermann calls it ‘‘the most wonderful of all religious books”. 
Another writer says, ‘‘It stands out from the other Gospels as the Sabbath from 
the other days of the week, as the office of the priesthood from the functions of the 
Levites, or like the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim, which was better than the 
vintage of Abiezer”. 

What gives the book its unique value? What makes it the most remarkable 
and the most valued of all the Gospels? 

I. Irs Artistic Form. It has been called ‘‘the supreme literary work of 
the world”. It observes all the finer laws governing the artistic composition of 
the ancient classical tragedies. As in these, the catastrophe is announced in the be- 
ginning, and the whole action of the narrative tends irresistibly toward the tragic 
close. As in the Iliad and the Niebelungenlied, and as in the tragedies of A2schylus 
and Sophocles, the terrible outcome is kept always in sight. The shadow of the 
cross falls athwart the first page. The certainty of the hero’s horrible death con- 
fronts us at every turn. The first time the Man Jesus appears He is heralded as a 
Lamb appointed for sacrifice. At the marriage feast His ‘‘ hour” is not yet come, 
but its dread significance is present in His mind. When He feeds the multitude, 
that joyous occasion is marred in their memory by His discourse on eating His 
flesh and drinking His blood. Most of the action is confined to the doomed city of 
Jerusalem. Galilee might lie bathed in the sunshine, filled with the glory of lilies 
and the singing of birds; but over Jerusalem the clouds were gathering, big with 
thunder, and the lightning flashes darted through them like travail-pains. John 
did not consciously compose a tragedy. He was telling a true story. He was 
recording a genuine biography. But in the telling he is artistic in fuller measure 
than the Synoptics ever were. In the recording he follows the laws of the highest 
literature. He gives life, color, movement to his narrative. His book has the 
freshness and the simplicity of the primitive masterpieces of the world’s writing. 

II. CONCENTRATION OF AcTION. Note how the action is concentrated in the 
progress of the story. There are two great divisions of the book. In the first 
division, chaps. 1-12, both time and place are manifold. The public ministry of 
Jesus touches the three provinces of the land and the three years of His activity- 
In the second division, chaps. 13-20, the action is centered in the one city of Jeru- 
salem, anda large part of it is confined to one room; and the time is limited to 
one evening and a few days. More and more the scene narrows from the whole 
land to Judea, and from Judea to Jerusalem, and in Jerusalem to the one upper 
room of the farewell discourses; and the interest intensifies as the narrative 
lengthens and the crisis is nearer and nearer at hand. 

III. Symmetry. The symmetry of the composition is noticeable in the recur- 
rence of certain characters and the nice balancing of the parts. Nathanael’s name 
appears in the preface and the appendix, in the introductory and in the concluding 
chapter, and nowhere else. The mother of Jesus is seen only in the beginning and 
at the end of the Gospel. At the opening of His public ministry Jesus attends a 
feast with His disciples and gives a demonstration of His power. At the end of 
His ministry He is again at a supper with His disciples, and He gives to thema 
demonstration of His love. 

IV. Conrrasts. This balancing of parts over against each other is accom- 
panied by continuous contrasts throughout the narrative. The great contrast be- 


THE MOST REMARKABLE GOSPEL. 449 


tween Faith and Unbelief runs through the whole book, and the new characters, 
as they are introduced. range themselves alternately between believers and un- 
believers, friends and foes. First, the spying, critical representatives of the Phar- 
isees, then the faithful and obedient disciples of John. The blinded leaders of the 
people stand over against the seeing blind man with his bold witness to the 
Messiahship of Jesus. The confession of Peter contrasted with the betrayal of 
Judas. The raising of Lazarus to life results in the dooming of Jesus to death. 
These contrasts occur in every chapter and help to give to the narrative its striking 
variety. 

V. Irs STRIKING Variety. 1. Notice the variety of the seasons presented in 
this Gospel. In the beginning of the activity of Jesus it is the Spring, the time of 
the sowing of seed and the germination and growth of the grain. Later in the 
narrative we come upon the Autumn and the feast of the ingathering of the fruits 
in the Fall. Then at the very height of the conflict between Jesus and the Jews we 
are expressly told that it was Winter. Finally, with the resurrection and the glori- 
fication of Jesus, it is the Spring again. 2. A great variety is added to the com- 
position by the alternation of incident and interlude, of story and sermon, of 
action and discourse. In the beginning we have two pictures introducing the light 
side and the dark side of the public ministry, the marriage feast at Cana, and the 
scourging of the sellers in the temple. These two vivid presentations are followed 
by two conversations, one in the darkness of the night and the other in the glare 
of the full noonday, with Nicodemus and with the woman at the well. Through the 
Gospel there is this alternation of word and deed. At the end, there are the solemn 
discourses with the disciples, followed by the still more solemn incidents of the 
trial and crucifixion. There isa constant changing from action to speech and 
from the brighter to the darker aspects of the history. There is a continuous 
variety that never allows the interest to flag. It is an artistic composition as well 
as a narrative true to the life. ; 

VI. IpbEat Grovupinc. John had an incalculable wealth of material, from 
which he has made a selection of scenes and sermons that will fit in with His purpose 
and be most suitable to his plan. It isin this selection and arrangement of material 
that the literary artist, as well as the saint and the seer, appears. He has brought 
this wonderful fulness of words and works into an amazingly brief compass. He 
has omitted all that seemed to him accidental or unessential. He has united the 
ideal moments of the life of Jesus into one harmonious presentation of the Ideal 
Life. He has made a work of art as well as a Gospel of the Son of God. 

VII. Sprritvuat InsicHt. John was a literary artist and he was a saint. 
This is the Gospel of Spiritual Insight. It has more of the words of Christ, and 
it has more of the mind of Christ, than any other. It has the most profound depths 
of thought in most simple and clear expression. It has reached the hearts of men 
in all the Christian centuries, and it will be regarded by them as the most remarkable 
and the most valuable of the Gospels to the very end of time. 


“IN THE BEGINNING”. 
BY REV. JAMES LEE MITCHELL, PH. D., 


PASTOR OF THE SECOND CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, ATTLEBORO, MASss. 


Along the northern boundary of the United States, bordering upon lower 
Canada, runs a low line of hills called the Laurentian mountains—the first land 
that ever lifted itself above the great deep, the beach of an otherwise boundless 
ocean. Whether the Garden of Eden was there I do not know, but it is certain 
these hills were the beginning of land, the beginning of life upon the earth. Is it 
this beginning then to which John refers when he says, ‘‘In the beginning was 
the Word”? 

There is an earlier beginning than this that we know about. Geology 
reports long eras before even those Laurentian hills made their appearance, 
nebulous ages, ages of cooling and condensation; and a voice speaking long 
before John’s said, ‘‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”, — 
a beginning that before ever there was even an ocean for the Laurentian hills to 
rise above, a beginning in utter formlessness. Is it that beginning Lo which John 
refers when he says, ‘‘ In the beginning was the Word”? 

To John’s vision the creation was a modern incident, a current event, an 
associated press dispatch of a happening intime. John’s beginning was a begin- 
ning before the creation, a beginning before there was a beginning, a beginning 
before there was a time in which to begin. The ‘‘In the beginning” of Genesis 
is the mere ‘‘once upon a time” of the story teller. The ‘‘In the beginning” of 
John is that point of light in the fathomless depth of eternity which always has 
been. If you would put this date down in your history book, you must start that 
book with eternity. 

Is it history? That is the question that rises right here. Is it history or the 
flight of poetic imagination? What right has any man, the infinitesimal fragment 
of a race whose generic life is a mere wink in these infinite distances, to date his 
narrative ‘‘in the beginning”? What can he know of the beginning? A few lines 

‘later ‘there was a man sent from God whose name was John”, —there starts the 
indubitable record of an eye-witness; but this ‘‘in the beginning ”— he was not 
an eye-witness of that. There is not even a pretence that he is following records 
or traditions either; and certainly he is not speculating, for there is not a prefa- 
tory word such as the most confident philosopher would feel bound to use. He 
writes as one who knew, and knew what could not be disputed. ‘‘In the begin- 
ning was the Word”. Surely this man is writing history, not poetry nor phi- 
losophy. 

But how did he know it? Why doesn’t he tell us how he knew it? For he 
must know also that this is a tremendous statement for anybody to make or to 
receive. The answer is that all Ephesus knew how he knew it, and all those that 
ever would read his Gospel would know how he knew it. Was he not John? 
No! not John. John was the man of long ago buried in the dark before the dawn. 
Was he not the disciple whom Jesus loved, the intimate friend of that Word who 
was there in the beginning, saturated still with His spirit? Did not all the world 


450 


“IN THE BEGINNING”. 451 


know of his experience on Patmos? Indeed the line which introduces the Apoca- 
lypse, ‘‘I was in the spirit”, is the introduction to all John’s writing. It is all 
revelation from God. In short the historical integrity of this first verse of John’s, 
which antedates every other verse in the Bible, and every other fact of science, 
rests on the historical integrity of Jesus. Jesus being what He claimed to be, and 
what His words and works prove Him to be, His intimate friend was of course 
perfectly competent to write the first verse of the first chapter of John without 
other introduction. Yes, we have here an historical date antedating all other 
dates — ‘‘ In the beginning”. 


Well, what in the beginning? ‘‘In the beginning was the Word”. Mat- 
thew takes pains to trace Christ’s genealogy for us to Abraham. Mark, the first 
written and most consecutively historic of the Gospels, shows His life as the 
fulfilment of prophecy. Luke traces Christ’s genealogy to Adam, for Luke’s 
conception of Christ is as humanity’s Saviour. He is the one promised to the 
mother of all. But John deals not with Adam, refers not to Abraham, takes no 
pains to strengthen his position with prophecies in time, passes by the creation as 
though it were an event of yesterday, penetrates the eternal past and shows us 
Jesus as one with the infinite Father. ‘‘In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God”. 

Extremely interesting arguments and so simple that a child can understand 
them have been formed to show that Jesus was not the product of His times. 
None but a legal expert with a case to make out of nothing ever supposed that He 
was. He is the antithesis of His times. At every step He does violence to 
Judaism, the land and ideas in the midst of which He was born, He is absolutely 
unaccountable, the despair of evolution, an evolution which starts with the world. 
He is the product of His times or all times about as much as the spring is the 
product of winter’s ice and snow. 

These have their purpose and the spring follows them, but the spring is not 
of them. Spring is from her own source of light and heat. John, not less his- 
toric than the historians but more so, not less scientific than the scientists but 
more so, reaches back, out and up to that real source whence Jesus was, and of 
whose passion He can be indeed the natural, the scientific, the historic product. 
“‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God”. The world’s spring- 
time is not of the world’s winter, but of that warm core of Eternity— God. 

There is a nautical term which beautifully describes the position of this verse 
of the great evangel in its relation to our poor plodding confusions, our utter 
failures to get a real start— ‘‘cleared”. When a vessel has got all through with 
unloading and loading cargoes, with troublesome landsmen and agents, with 
docks and tugs and officialdom’s red tapes, cast off her last cable and turned her 
prow to the great free seas, she is spoken of as ‘‘cleared”. John wrote that 
Gospel in the midst of as wild a shrieking of human voices, as mad a confusion of 
human thoughts as ever was. If ever worldly businesses and rocky despairs and 
narrow channels and official humanities surrounded anything, they surrounded 


that Gospel, but at the very first verse it cleared for the eternities. ‘‘In the 
beginning was the Word and the Word was God”. It cleared ‘‘in spite of rock 
and tempest’s roar, in spite of false lights on the shore”. The centuries have not 


called it back, nor the seas washed it down. There is not, nor ever will be, any- 
thing better for us than to follow in its white wake out to sea. 


* * * * * * * * * * 


Is it not great for you and me who are not great scientists nor mighty think- 


452 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. a 


; ae 
ers and yet must start somewhere, must have a foundation for thought and hope 


somewhere, if there is to be any manhood in us, to have this unshakable verse, a st 


secret knowledge from the heart of God to our hearts? ‘‘In the beginning was the 
Word and the Word was God.” I once lived in a room where the sun rose before 
it was morning. Before my window a glorious old steeple shot its fearless spire 
hundreds of feet up into the sky and caught the sun’s beams before it was over 
the city’s horizon and flung them down into my room. Many a humble heart this 
day walks in faith because of this majestic high Gospel. It flings down into the 
depths of the soul some of the light of the yet unrisen sun of perfect vision. 





A LESSON IN METHODS. 
*BY REV. EDWIN M. POTEHAT, D.D., 


PASTOR OF THE BROAD STREET MEMORIAL Baprist CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA, Pa. 


The Gospel of John may be conceived as a manual of method in Christian 
work. Justafter the temptation in the wilderness ( Matt. 4: 1-11 ) our Lord ap- 
pears a second time in the Jordan valley to begin His work. In the wilderness He 
had seen great visions, and the horizon around Him widened until it embraced all 
the kingdoms of the world; and He knew them to be His. 

How now will He begin to enact His claim? How will He announce His 
Messiahship ? When men see Him again will they see Him assuming the title and 
the prerogatives of the Prince of Israel? No; it isa day of small things which 
succeeds the day of great visions. In the Jordan valley He is seen walking alone, 
then talking with two men, then with three others. And thus is ushered in the 
work of the world’s Teacher and Saviour. 

This way of going to work on a world enterprise was either consummate folly 
or supreme wisdom. That it was a deliberately chosen method appears from the 
rest of the Gospel of John, which is largely taken up with private interviews and 
the direct results of these. Chapter 3 is occupied with Nicodemus; chapter 4 is 
occupied with the woman of .Samaria; chapter 5 is occupied with the man at the 
pool of Bethesda, and a king’s officer; chapter 9 is occupied with a man born 
blind; chapter 11 is occupied with Lazarus; chapter 12 is occupied with certain 
Greeks; chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 are occupied with the Twelve; and chapter 
21 is occupied with Peter and John. Thus we see how large a share of His atten- 
tion our Lord bestowed upon individuals. A group of fishermen, a leading citi- 
zen, a woman of the street, a king’s officer, a hospital cripple, a blind man, a sick 
friend—these, in their turn, are given all the heart and help of the Son of Man. 
And in chapter 7, His brothers, impatient of His method, are insisting that He 
must get out among the people more, and makea more public display of His 
powers. 

In the method He adopted to accomplish His work, we have two things :— 

a. Our Lord’s estimate of the individual. Jesus Christ discovered the single 
soul, and stamped its value. He said it was worth more than all the world of 
things. Before He taught, the individual was hardly more than a grain of sand in 
asand hill. After He had spoken men saw the awful halo of personal account- 
ability encircling the head of every member of the race. 

6. The true method of propagandism. The only way for anything to spread 
through the living organism of humanity—whether an idea, a plague, a salva- 
tion—is by personal contact. And the results of our Lord’s method are an 
abundant vindication of His wisdom in choosing it. Trace these results, for 
example, in the case of John, who had his first interview with his Lord there in 
the Jordan valley, and who lived to give the world the Gospel we are studying. 
Or take Peter as your example, and recall Pentecost and the subsequent history. 


* Now President of Furman University, Greenville, S.C. 


453 















454 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 
Thus while individuals occupy the foreground and seem to absorb th 
attention, crowding up behind them, coming to its light, we see the we 


A LESSON. 


If this was the method of our Lord, it is the true method for us, 
“Individual work for individuals”, as Dr. H. Clay Trumbull put it 
his charming little book. Our low estimate of the individual lurks 
excuse as ‘‘ There’s nothing Ican do!” But you can win a child to | 
seems to us a small thing—yet a little weaver lad, the only one receiv 


church at Blantyre in a year, grew to be David Livingstone. ree J 
Lee ne Ot 
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THE CONDITION OF ENTRANCE INTO THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 
AN EXPOSITION OF ST. JOHN 3: J-J6. 


BY REV. WILLIAM C. WHITFORD, A. M., 


PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE IN ALFRED THEOLOGICAL 


SEMINARY. ALFRED, N. Y. 


The precise nature of the Kingdom of God baffles definition. Our Saviour 
began His preaching with the theme, ‘‘ Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand” ; 
and He had this kingdom as the principal subject of His teaching all through His 
earthly ministry. Although students of the New Testament can not agree as to the 
content of this expression, ‘‘ Kingdom of God”, it can not be said that we know 
nothing of it. The teachings of our Saviour and the enlightenment of the Holy 
Spirit have not been in vain. This kingdom is so great and grand that our earthly 
words fail to encompass it. It is a heavenly kingdom and has its origin in God. 
We know something about it just as we know something about God Himself; and 
we may know more and more if we fully follow the light that is before us, and are 
true to the God that loves us. 

In the third chapter of the Gospel according to John, our Saviour is speaking 
of entrance into this kingdom. Two fundamental errors in regard to citizenship 
in the kingdom were cherished by the men of that day as well as of this. (1) It 
is hard to become a citizen of the kingdom, and (2) it is easy to become a citizen of 
the Kingdom of God. Contradictory as these statements may seem, they are both 
alike errors, as may he inferred from the words of our Lord. 

The moral man thinks that entering into the kingdom is so easy that he almost 
fails to consider the question of entrance for himself. 

Nicodemus, a doctor of the law, was greatly interested in the teaching of the 
new prophet from Galilee. He was doubtless a very devout man, and was natu- 
rally moved by the evident sincerity of Jesus and His earnestness of purpose. He 
came therefore by night to express approval of this young Teacher and His work, 
and to inquire further of His teaching. He took it for granted that he, himself, as 
well as all other good Israelites were already within the Kingdom of God. Were 
they not the children of Abraham? Were they not the chosen people of God? 

Nicodemus ‘was startled when Jesus said to him, ‘‘ Except one be born from 
above he can not see the Kingdom of God”. Students have been long discussing 
the meaning of the word which,King James’ translators rendered, ‘‘again”, and 
our American Reyisers, ‘‘anew”. ‘The former ‘translation certainly failed of 
expressing the meaning of the |word; we must choose between the renderings, 
‘““anew” or ‘‘from above”. The characteristic feature of the birth referred to is 
not that it is another, but that it is of a different origin. 

In his amazement that anything should be required of him, Nicodemus grasps 
at the idea of birth and ignores or misapprehends the adverb. Even according to 
the tenor of the foolish question which Nicodemus asks, the requirement is stupen- 
dous,—to think that a man must be born again in order to enter the Kingdom of 
God. But this new birth is of a higher character than the earthly and physical. 


> 


455 


456 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


‘“ As many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become children of God,— 
even to those who believed upon His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the 
will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”. There could be no merit or 
utility in rebirth in a physical sense, even if such a thing were possible. The new 
birth of which Jesus speaks is of the Spirit. 

A new principle and motive of life must enter into the nature of man: in fact 
his nature must be changed. We are very apt to think of this statement as applying 
to a heathen Chinaman or to a cannibal of the Southern seas, or perhaps to the 
criminal and drunkard of our own land. But Jesus was speaking to one of the most 
cultured and religious men of his time, a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin. 
This condition, we may be sure, rests upon every one. No matter how refined a 
man is, no matter how moral, no’ matter how devoted to the law, he must be born 
from above in order to inherit the Kingdom of God and attain new life, the real life. 

This new life is of the Holy Spirit, and is therefore independent of every earthly 
element; it is within the soul, a life from God. We are not, however, to ignore 
the fact that our Saviour uses another word along with Sfzritin v. 5. ‘* Verily, 
verily, I say unto thee, except one be born of water and the Spirit, he can not enter 
the Kingdom of God”. Although the new birth is entirely spiritual it is associated 
with an external element. Jesus does not intend to speak of two distinct means in 
bringing about this birth. It is a mistake to translate as King James’ version, ‘‘ Of 
water and of the Spirit”. The water is the subordinate, external, and, perhaps, 
merely figurative element. We may speak of the birth of the Spirit; but we can 
not properly speak of the birth of water. Christian baptism is to be exalted because 
of its symbolical reference; but it is not to be unduly made prominent, because its 
efficacy,—its very reality indeed, depends upon the presence of the personal Holy 
Spirit. The doctrine of baptismal regeneration, or the teaching that baptism is a 
saving ordinance is not of God but of man. Simon Magus was baptized; but Peter 
said to him, ‘‘ Thou hast no part nor lot in this matter”. 

Our Saviour enforces the truth that this new birth,—the entrance into the 
kingdom,—is not of man but of God by referring to the phenomenon of the wind. 
‘*The wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest 
not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the 
Spirit”. We can not see nor understand the wind: but we can observe that which 
is occasioned by it, and so believe its existence, even if we can not explain it. 

Shall we conclude then, that entrance into the Kingdom of God is altogether 
beyond our control and so no occasion of thought for us? Shall we despair at once 
because the new birth is from above and not of ourselves? Our Saviour evidently 
intended to teach Nicodemus that entrance into the kingdom was not as easy as he 
supposed, but He had no desire to lead him into the opposite error. He gavea 
shock to his present feeling of security in order that he might come to a realization 
of his own lack. 

The great mistake of many a poor sinner in regard to entrance into the kingdom 
is that the way is by far too difficult for him, and that he might as well despair at 
once. But there is another aspect of the commencement of the new life that appeals 
directly to the activity of those who would enter. Continuing His teaching to 
Nicodemus, our Lord says, ‘‘ And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth may in Him 
have eternal life”. Belief in a crucified Saviour is the way into the Kingdom of 
God. The promise is broad and the condition is in the heart of the one who would 
enter: Whosoever believeth. 

The Evangelist John adds a word of explanation, which is indeed an epitome 





CONDITION OF ENTRANCE INTO THE KINGDOM. 457 


of the whole message of Good News,—the Little Gospel, as Martin Luther calls it. 
‘“*For God so loved the World, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whoso- 
ever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life”. 

From the human point of view the one requisite for entrance into the Kingdom 
of God is faith,—that is, belief in the promises of God and acceptance of them. 
Faith is not mere credence. An intellectual belief in the statements of the Holy 
Scriptures with no acceptance of them is no faith at all. Faith in Jesus means 
nothing less than an active trust in Him, a personal allegiance to Him as Lord and 
Master. 

Some have wondered that we have in John 3: 16 no mention of repentance, and 
indeed that Jesus spoke to Nicodemus nothing about repentance. This omission 
is not because repentance is not needed: it is alluded to in the reference to the 
water of baptism, and is involved in faith. The teaching of John the Baptist was 
for Pharisees as well as for others. The cultured doctor of the law that came to 
Jesus by night must enter the kingdom by the same door as any other man. It is 
impossible that one should really accept Jesus as Master,—that is, have faith in Him, 
and still cling to sin. He Himself says, ‘‘ Ye cannot serve God and Mammon”. 
As long as we try to serve both, we are serving only the latter; and as soon as we 
have the genuine purpose to serve God alone, we have not only ceased to serve the 
god of this world but have turned our backs upon him. 

With this understanding of the conditions of entrance into the kingdom, we 
need not fear to say that our citizenship is of our own choice. We have felt our 
lost condition and have accepted the promise. We have repented of our sins and 
have entered into eternal life. On the other hand we must say also, we know of 
a surety that salvation is not of ourselves. ‘‘For by grace have ye been saved 
through faith ; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph.2:8). We have 
been born from above, we have passed from death into life, surely not by any power 
of our own, but through the Holy Spirit. He looked upon our low estate and has 
lifted us up. Our Redeemer, the Son of God has left His exalted place and emptied 
Himself. He took upon Himselt frail flesh, lived among men, suffered, and died 
upon the cross. He was buried in Joseph’s tomb; He arose from the dead, and 
ever liveth at the right hand of God to intercede for us. 

There is but one condition of entrance into the Kingdom of God, although this 
condition has two aspects. We are saved through acceptance of the redemption 
wrought for us. 


* THE GOSPEL OF THE CONVERSATIONS. 
BY REV. JAMES G. VOSE, D. D., 


PASTOR EMERITUS OF THE BENEFICENT CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 
PROVIDENCE, R. I. 


The Gospel of John may be called the Gospel of the Conversations, for, more 
than any other, it reports particular interviews of our Lord with individuals. In 
the first chapter we have the conversation with Nathanael; in the second, with the 
mother of Jesus; in the third, with Nicodemus; in the fourth, with the woman of 
Samaria; and passing by others less striking, we have the interviews with Mary 
and Martha, and the words spoken at the Supper; until after the Resurrection, the 
history closes with question and answer, as, they passed between our Lord and 
Mary Magdalene, and Thomas, and finally with Peter and John. 

These conversations, too, are real conversations, for Jesus was not like some 


famous men, who discourse in monologue. Even His addresses to the multitude 


were often interrupted by the inquiries or remarks of others, and, in smaller com- 
panies He guided the conversation, while apparently taking the lesser part. The 


*“ golden silences” of Jesus are very marked, and George Borrow, in that fasci- 


nating book, ‘‘ The Bible in Spain,” relates that the taciturn people of the little 
Republic of Andorra noticed these silences, and said of them, ‘‘ Jesus played the 
Andorran.” While He spoke with authority, yet He dispelled all feeling of re- 
straint, and even seemed to awaken in others unwonted freedom. Not unfre- 
quently He gave the thought, and let them do the talking. He had the rare quality 
of a good listener, and He heard with such deep penetration that His answers, as is 
sometimes plainly stated, were directed to the thoughts of men rather than to their 
words. 


It is often said that Jesus was the greatest of preachers, but not so often that. 


He preferred to converse. Then indeed He appears to have been most truly Him- 
self, when, in direct appeal to some individual heart, or in the effort to comfort or 
instruct a few, He utters those great sayings which shine like the fixed stars in the 
firmament. He never appears to have saved anything fora large audience, nor 
feared that any utterance of truth, breathed into the receptive heart of however 
humble a hearer, could fail of its effect. Thus, if you would seek for the doc- 
trines of Jesus, the great and distinctive revelations which mark His career on 
earth, you will find them in His private interviews with Nicodemus, and the sisters 
of Bethany, and the woman of Samaria. 

And these conversations all have a personal turn. They attach great prin- 
ciples to common life, and they lead people through their own needs to the grand- 
est spiritual truths. Jesus evidently has confidence in the living power of truth, 
and therefore does not press it, but leaves His hearers to follow out the idea and 
make the application for themselves. We are surprised at the dialogue which is 
taken up with the sayings of others, until we learn the germinant power of Jesus’ 
words, and see them, as it were, growing before our eyes in other minds. 

With the woman of Samaria, Jesus opens the conversation with a simple re- 
quest. He asks a favor, almost the only one that is recorded of His asking, and 


* Printed originally in the Andover Review. 


458 





ee 


THE GOSPEL OF THE CONVERSATIONS. 459 


the smallest that could be asked. Thus throwing Himself on her sympathy, and 
willing to be dependent on her for the relief of His manifest weariness, He opens 
the way for interchange of thought. But the prejudice that is strong in her people 
cannot be repressed, and she utters it not scornfully, but with a feeling of surprise- 
Indifferent to this narrow prejudice, and seeing that the time is not yet come to 
overthrow it, our Lord passes into what we may call the beautiful parable of ‘‘ The 
Water of Life,” which the woman, taking half literally, and in deep amazement at 
the power of His speech, answers with a counter petition, that He would give her 
this water, ‘‘that I thirst not, neither come all the way hither to draw.” The 
favor that Jesus asked is forgotten. The relation is changed, or rather, each has 
shown a willingness to trust the other, which is the closest bond of sympathy. 
But Jesus, perceiving that He has made no definite impression upon her, save that 
of friendliness and a curious interest, turns suddenly to the woman with the per- 
sonal command, ‘‘ Go, call thy husband, and come hither”; and when she denies 
the existence of sucha relationship, He turns the leaves of her past history with 
anunsparing hand. To all this she humbly rejoins, as being no longer able to 
evade the truth, ‘‘ Sir. I perceive that Thou art a prophet”; and then, as if still 
wishing to turn the conversation, she hastens to recall the distinction between her 
own people and the Jews. We can almost see her confusion, which she attempts 
to hide in this manner. Coleridge somewhere says that ‘‘ Multitudes never blush,” 
and that it is safer to appeal to the honor and conscience of an individual than to 
acrowd. At any rate, she drops the subject, but the thought still lingers in her 
mind. The personal matter is the central point of the conversation, as we shall 
afterwards more clearly see; and yet she prepares for herself a further humiliation 
by bringing up the great subject of dispute between the Jews and the Samaritans- 

And now our Lord, referring no more to the personal charge which He has 
brought home to her conscience, addresses her witha sublimity rising to the height 
ot His grandest utterances, describing the nature of worship, and the approach to: 
the Father that is open to every longing heart in all the world. But in the midst 
of it He meets and overthrows the prejudice which she first introduced, and sweeps 
it out of the way with a lofty and decisive sentence that leaves no room for answer = 
‘* Ye worship ye know not what. We know what we worship, for salvation is ot 
the Jews”. Why does she not resent this humbling sentence? Why does not her 
Samaritan hatred rise in defiance, as it would have done, one must think, had Jesus 
thus addressed her at the first? Ah, it is because of that stroke with which He had 
smitten her conscience when He laid bare the deformity of her past life. She has 
no heart to contend against this. Her quick intuition brings up the thought of 
the promised Messiah, and the revelation of herself that He has made compels her 
to answer with docility, ‘‘ When He is come, He will tell us all things”. What 
does she refer to? What is in her mind as she gives this answer, half musingly? 
The great and spiritual truths of which Jesus has spoken? Yes, but much more 
the revelation of her own heart and life. She may seek to change the subject ; our 
Lord may forbear, as He did, to press it any further, but the arrow has hit the mark 
and clings to the wound. The revelation of the Christ to her, as to every one, is 
in what He has told her of herself. This is what Paul means by ‘‘ being appre- 
hended” of the Christ. And that we have in this the true impression that was 
made on her mind appears from her own description of the interview: ‘* Come, see 
a man which told me all things that ever I did. Can this be the Christ?” 

Here is the triumph of the conversation, that she had been made to see her- 
self, and acknowledge the heart-searching power of the Redeemer. Says Thomas 
a Kempis, “‘It asketh great skill to know how to hold converse with Jesus”; but 


460 THE GOSPEL OF ST./OHN. 


he adds, ‘‘ Be thou humble and peaceable, and Jesus will be with thee.” In accept- 
ing His searching rebuke, she has discovered the glory of His character and mis- 
sion. 

If, then, we would understand the effect of our Lord’s conversation with the 
woman of Samaria, we must read it in the message she bore to her people: ‘* Come, 
see a man which told me all things that ever I did. Can this be the Christ?” 
She says nothing of His promise of never-failing water, nor of His grand sen- 
tences about worship, still less of His being a Jew and proclaiming their super- 
iority. The one thought which fills her mind, and gives a glow and a fascination 
to her report that cannot be resisted, is what He has told her of herself. This is 
her message, her watchword, so to speak, that passed from lip to lip as she hur- 
ried on among her townsfolk, so that we read: ‘‘ Many of the Samaritans of that 
city believed on Him for the saying of the woman, ‘ He told me all that ever I 
didi”. 

It were hardly needful to bring into clearer light those principles of human 
nature which are here involved. We need a friend who knows us altogether, and 
to whom we can be perfectly joined. Such sympathy and a thorough comprehen- 
sion are vainly sought in mere human relations. As says the author of the 
** Christian Year” : 


“Not even the tenderest heart, and next our own, 
Kncws half the reasons why we smile or sigh”. 


This thorough comprehension our Lord Jesus only can supply. He knows 
every thought and feeling, He holds the threads of our past life, seeing every error, 
every crime. And He is ready to interweave His own love and knowledge, upon 
which we may rest. He interprets with personal love and power the language of 
the writer of the 139th Psalm: ‘‘O Lord, Thou hath searched me and known 
me. * * * Thou understandeth my thought afar off. * * * Thou art 
acquainted with all my ways”. 

It seems at first a startling hyperbole, that the woman should have gone 
through the town saying to every one, ‘‘ He told me all that ever I did”. Why, it 
was but a single sentence in which He had spoken of her personal relations. But 
there was no other way to describe the truth. How tame, and false even, had she 
said, ‘‘ He knows some things about me”, or, ‘‘ He knows the chief things”; for 
His knowledge covers all and admits no less a compass than this — ‘‘ He told me 
all that ever I did”. 

The truth which is here made known to us and answers to every Christian 
experience is, that Jesus reveals to us the hidden life. He enters our conscious- 
ness, and becomes another self within us. A little child, tired of play, sits down 
by his mother, and she tells him something that happened years ago; stories 
of his infant days, and of his little brothers and sisters, and of the household pets. 
He is amazed that she can tell so much of what has gone on about him; that she 
knows more of him that even he does himself. From other lips he would scarcely 
believe it true; but he listens, with rapt amazement, to some story of the earliest 
opening of his mind, and when it ceases, he cries out, ‘‘ Tell that again”. This 
is the nearness of a mother’s love. It is a consciousness that enwraps our own; a 
memory that encloses ours, and holds it in custody. What we were from the first, 
and what were the earliest movements of thought and feeling —these are in her 
keeping more than our own. But there is a higher than human consciousness 
that enwraps ours. There is a deeper love, as there is a more far-reaching knowl- 





THE GOSPEL OF THE CONVERSATIONS. 461 


edge. It is Jesus who comes and sits by us, as He sat on the well of Sychar; and 
into our ears He pours the story of our life — the wasted hours, the false and self- 
ish passions, the unthinking chase after worthless toys. To us, also, He will 
reveal all things. Rightly listening, we shall say, with humble yet with glad 
surprise, ‘‘ He told me all that ever I did”. 

Thus Jesus becomes another self within us. There is that familiarity of inter- 
course which is the highest delight of the soul. And He does not hesitate to use 
figures regarding it which present the simplest picture of intimate acquaintance 
with us. ‘‘ Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My voice and 
open the door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with Me”. It is 
no class of men, no favored few, to whom He offers His inmost heart; but to 
each, in just the present state of character and knowledge, with the faults of 
to-day still cleaving, with the crimes and follies of the past still in memory. Nor 
can He ever afterward reject us because of past shame; for the first thing He does 
is to tell us all that we ever did. Other friends might grow cold when they came 
to know our history; our past associations and misdeeds might alienate them or 
breed disgust; but not so with Jesus. He knows us altogether, and, accepting 
Him, we enter into full fellowship with a forgiving and faithful Lord. 

This perfect knowledge of the Christ is our greatest safeguard. It is needful, 
to defend us from plunging farther into sin, that we have the confidence of a 
loving Saviour. When we are on the verge of temptation, the thought that He 
knows and grieves over our past sins may win us back. When ready to despair of 
His favor, or to think it impossible that such as we should be accepted or enabled 
to do anything for His honor, we may remind ourselves that, when He gave us the 
invitation to repent, He weighed the full burden of our transgressions. He did not 
undertake a work of which He knew not the magnitude. With joy we may press 
close to our hearts the saying of the woman, ‘‘ He told me all that ever I did”. 

The conversation of Jesus with the woman at the well throws light on the 
subject of confession. That the practice of auricular confession, which pre- 
vailed in the Medieval church, had a basis in the sincere longing of the penitent, 
there is no doubt. Indeed, confession was regarded as a part of repentance, or at 
least the outward manifestations of it. The danger arose from magnifying the 
outward until it absorbed and drew away the life of the inward. This could 
hardly be otherwise, since human confessors are too prone to claim authority, and 
the idea of having fulfilled a painful task makes men imagine that their guilt is 
relieved. But when the confessional is abolished, there remains often a slavish 
view of repentance, which takes away its true blessedness. Some are troubled 
because they know not how long they ought to repent. Ought they to mention in 
words every sin they have ever committed? If they forget or omit any, will God 
pardon? If they do not rightly estimate the guilt of all, and consider some their 
chief sins which are not so, will God have patience with their mistakes ? 

How happily is all this relieved when we learn the noon-day lesson taught at 
the well of Sychar, that it is the Christ who reveals us to ourselves! It is not for 
you to find out your sin, but for Him to reveal it to you. With the Psalmist, you 
ask God to search you, ‘* that you may be led in the way everlasting”. You are to 
become acquainted with your own heart by having Him read it to you; and all 
you can tell Him will be of that which He has told you before. Repentance now 
loses its bitterness, because it is the revelation of the Christ. ‘‘ Once”, says 
Luther, ‘‘I thought no word so bitter as repentance; now there is none more 
sweet, and those passages in the Bible that used to terrify me now smile and sport 
about me”. In the same spirit, Augustine says, in his ‘‘ Confessions”, ‘‘ I will 


462 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. ? 


now call to mind my past foulness and the carnal corruptions of my soul ; not ; 
because I love them, but that I may love Thee,O my God. For love of Thy loveI — 


do it; reviewing my most wicked ways in the very bitterness of my remembrance, 
that Thou mayst grow sweet unto me”. The power of sucha revelation of the 
Christ is manifest in the fact, that the largest harvest of souls ever gathered while 
on earth was reaped in the two days He spent at Sychar. A soul brought face to 
face with Him, beholding His glory by being self-revealed, is a fit instrument to 
convey to others the advent of the Christ. Here is the song of Bethlehem, ‘* Peace 
and good will”. The woman waits not for a full rehearsal of all the windings of 
her guilt, for He has known and felt it all. 

For us there is the same freedom of approach. Listening to Him, you also, 
shall learn to confess. Receiving into your heart His love and sympathy, your 
lips shall be opened to tell Him every want and grief, and prayer shall be only the 
communion of kindred minds. The saying of the woman shall become your 
saying, ‘‘ He told me all that ever I did”. 





¢ 


THE PRINCIPLE OF MISSIONS IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN. 
BY REV. W. C. BITTING, D. D., 
PASTOR OF THE MounT Morris Baptist CHurcH, NEw York, N. Y. 


There are many motives for missions, among which we may mention :— 

1. The imperial motive of loyalty to the king (Matt. 28: 19). 

2. The theological motive (Luke 14: 19, 10) of the ‘‘ lost” condition of 
men. 

3. The philanthropic motive (Matt. 22:39) of the wish to share what we 
have with others. 

4. The fiduciary motive (Matt. 10: 8a) of stewardship of what we have (Matt. 
241 45-51). 

5. The biological motive which is emphasized in the Fourth Gospel. 

John refers to the ‘‘ Kingdom of God” only twice. (1) Inthe account of the 
talk with Nicodemus, who was looking for a kingdom (3:3, 5), and (4) in the 
account of the trial before Pilate (18 : 33-38), when our Lord is answering a charge 
of sedition. 

According to the first three Gospels the great blessing brought by the King to 
the world was the Kingdom of God. How natural, then, for them to record those 
imperial words in which the Holy Monarch commands His followers to conquer the 
world. According to the Fourth Gospel, the great blessing brought by ‘‘the life 
which was the light of men” is everywhere described by the writer as eternal life, 
or the life of the Eternal One inus. From this conception he gets his favorite 
word life. How natural that he should carefully observe the workings of that life 
which is from above, when it enters into human hearts! His Gospel is a study in 
spiritual biology. What the synoptists conceive of as the spreading of a kingdom, 
John contemplates as the reproduction ofa life. ‘‘The Kingdom of God is like” 
is the great parabolic preface in the first three Gospels which introduces us to a 
wealth of analogies from many realms of organic existence. No such verbal herald 
announces a coming simile in the Fourth Gospel. John leads us immediately into 
the presence of life. He records not parables, but incidents; not figures which 
illustrate separate functions, but facts that unfold to our delighted eyes the life 
itself, active in all its functions. Indeed, his entire narrative is a missionary docu- 
ment of the most striking character. He avows this and nothing else as his pur- 
pose. ‘‘Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, 
which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye may believe,that 
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in His 
name” (John 20: 30, 31). 

All life (a) organizes itself, (4) grows by assimilation of externals, (c) wastes 
in the exercise of selection, (@) reproduces itself. In the last of these functions we 
find the missionary principle according to John’s Gospel. Let us take some illus- 
trations :— 

(1) John 1. The first chapter is in part missionary autobiography. It 
records introductions and reproductions. Ona Sunday morning the Baptist stood 
with two of his disciples on the river bank. He loses no time in pointing his com- 
panions to ‘‘ The Lamb of God”. They leave the guidepost to follow ‘‘the way”, 


463 


464 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


and the same day discover the Messiah. What is the first impulse that masters 
these new disciples of Jesus? Each runs with haste to find his own brother. It is 
a race of rivals. Andrew first finds his brother. He brings Simon to Jesus, and 
does a good day’s work for the world. 

Again, Jesus finds Philip, and at once Philip finds Nathanael. Not a day is 
allowed to pass. With noble words, the fullest meaning of which he could not 
have understood, he affirms that Moses and the prophets wrote of Jesus. When 
objection is made to Nazareth as a source of good, the only answer is that born 
from experience, and calling to experiment, ‘* Come and see”. 

Why is it that on the opening day of the ministry of our Lord these four men 
begin their effort to bring others? No ‘‘ Great Commission” had been uttered, no 
hope of reward had been stimulated, no crowns or thrones had been offered, no 
punishment had been threatened for the fruitless. Not a motive usually urged 
today tor evangelistic work and missionary activity had been revealed. So far as 
the narrative gives light, their eager words and swift feet and cordial hands were 
the pure expressions of that spontaneous, free, automatic new life which had begun 
to throb in their hearts. This new'life, uncultured, deficient in true apprehension 
of the Messiah, but strong in its vitality, begins by asserting its reproductive 
instinct. It will have another. So close is the bond between finding for one’s self 
and finding another, that the birthday of the church is its first missionary day also. 
The church and the propaganda were born together. Its initial impulse is evan- 
gelistic. This propagating instinct controls their souls at the same time that their 
affection for Jesus awakes. We are convinced after reading in v. 41 the glorious 
‘*Eureka”, ‘‘I have found Him”, that immediately afterward we will read, ‘*‘ And 
he brought him to Jesus”. Apostles are evolved from disciples, as the full corn in 
the ear from the seed. So normally does bringing grow out of finding, so organ- 
ically does missionary work develop as the bloom, flower and fruit of discipleship. 
It is only the beautiful effort to reproduce in others the joy we ourselves have 
experienced. ‘‘’ That which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, 
that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life * * * 
declare we unto you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us ; and our fellow- 
ship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1: 1-3). So this 
John writes a half century afterward concerning the motive of His life, begotten on 
that first day. 

(2) John 4. Nearly a year after this time, Jesus ‘‘ must needs” go through 
‘Samaria. Beside the historic well He meets a woman. Absolutely no tangential 
point existed between the Christ and this woman but their common desire for 
water. Through this coincident want, in a conversation matchless for delicacy and 
tact, He reveals Himself as the Messiah. All consciousness of her purpose at the 
well is eclipsed for the moment, as truly as the hunger of the preacher is forgotten 
in His ministry to the single, needy heart. She leaves her waterpot, enters Sychar, 
and becomes the first city missionary mentioned in the New Testament. She is 
not content with relating experiences, but must couple with them aninvitation. It 


is the same old story of the automatic life—‘‘ Come and see”. The crowds follow. 
In great procession the people stream out of the city gates, and, beholding them, 
Jesus points His disciples to the opportunity, and says: ‘‘ The fields are white 
unto the harvest”. The very figure He uses suggests the sowing and reaping. 


This is indeed what had occurred. ‘There was no command to the woman. No 
more unlikely field for missionary work was ever entered than Samaria. Yet no 
miracle was worked there to prepare for or authenticate the message. The agitation 
of the city arose from the earnest and profound impulse of one soul to bring others. 





“Yr 


THE PRINCIPLE OF MISSIONS. 465 


There was the instinct of vitality to reproduce in them the same consciousness 
which she herself possessed. The story of the first chapter of John is thus repeated 
in the fourth chapter. The steps in both are (a) hospitality to testimony, (4) 
investigation, (c) experience and (d@) proclamation of truth. All honest hearing 
ends in preaching. 

(3) John g. Aman born blind was healed. He knew Jesus only as healer. 
With what superb wit he refutes the charge that Jesus was a sinner, and what 
magnificent confidence underlies his creed concerning his benefactor. Severe 
cross-questioning, acute efforts to entangle him in criticism of Jesus, all fail. 
Asked once more about his blessing, he begins to preach, ‘‘I have told you and ye 
did not hear, why do you wish to hear it again? Do you also wish to become His 
disciples?” What are the steps of his ascentfrom receptivity to activity? A blind 
man, a healed man with an invincible experience, a witness and an advocate. 
These are the stages of his swift progress. He will not wait for the belated phil- 
osophy of his blessing. His vital experience flies on rushing wings to bear the 
tidings of blessing, and gratefully to win other hearts to love his deliverer, while 
his slow theology is putting on its shoes. All the more forceful is this incident as 
an illustration of our principle, because not until after his appealing question did 
he believe on Jesus as the Son of God. The impulse immediately follows the 
blessing and precedes theenlightenment. He would have others know what he had 
discovered. Once more, in the ninth chapter, faith is fruitful, and to the list of the 
Judean Baptist, the Galilean sons of Zebedee, Andrewand Philip,and the woman 
of Samaria, we must add the Jerusalem blind man as illustrations of our principle. 

(4) John 12. On the last Tuesday of Jesus’ life certain Hellenes, or pure 
Greeks, not proselytes, desire to see Jesus. The same Philip who found Nathanael 
is ready to lead them to the Great Teacher. Here again, as in the first chapter, we 
find together introduction and reproduction. Of what did Jesus speak to them? 
Of that which filled His mind at the time. What words convey His view of the 
great event on Calvary? When He speaks to Nicodemus, the Jewish ruler, He 
chooses a familiar illustration from Hebrew history: ‘‘As Moses lifted up the ser- 
pent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up”. But to those 
Greeks, who probably cared little for that history, He speaks the great parable of 
nature. ‘‘ Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die it abideth by itself 
alone, but if it die it beareth much fruit”. ‘*So it is with life” He continues: 
‘‘ whoever saves but does not sow his life will lose it. Whoever sows but does not 
save his life, will eventually receive it back multiplied indefinitely. It is true of all 
life, and therefore of yours and Mine. IfI be not lifted up, I abide by Myself 
alone. If I die I reproduce Myself in millions of hearts. I will draw all men unto 
Me, if Lam lifted up”. The Christ without a cross must be forever alone. The 
Christ on the cross exhibits the law of the cross as that of the harvest. There will 
be duplication and reduplication. Christ the seed, Christians the harvest. The 
cross and missions are here forever married in holy union by Jesus Himself under 
the holy law of reproduction. ‘‘ What God has joined together, let no man put 
asunder”. So the Teacher Himself seals this thought. How real and rich the 
Johannine conception of the extension of the kingdom! From this author the 
“Great Commission” is indeed absent, but from the Jordan to the cross in His 
Gospel there is the profound truth constantly asserted: Every real disciple brings 
another. The church itself is the harvest from the Christ-sown seed on Calvary. 

Missionary enthusiasm is thus the revelation of the vitality of the new life in 
Christ. Regeneration issues in spiritual reproduction as normally as generation 
produces generation in the physical life. Far be it from any one to abate one jot 


466 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


or tittle of absolute imperativeness of the King’s order to go into all the world and 
preach the good news to every creature. Without treason to His authority no one 
dares dilute the power of the sacredness of that command. Yet from the Fourth 
Gospel we see how true it is that men filled with the Christ life would have made 
the effort to win others to sucha glorious Lord. The great mandate rests upon 
the life that is within our souls. The followers of the Saviour who gives such a life 
should carry the message that brings that life to the ends of the earth because of 
that life itself. Worldwide evangelization is the ideal of spiritual life. Questions 
of geography are impertinent. What then is missionary work? 

Merely Andrew and John seeking their kin, and saying: ‘* We have found the 
Christ!” Philip in all lands answering to the prejudiced Nathanaels, ‘* Come and 
see”; the woman preaching out of a full experience, ‘‘ Come, see a man who told 
me all things that ever I did. Can this be the Christ ?”; those who proclaim in the 
strength of their unanswerable experiences, ‘‘One thing I know, that, whereas I 
was blind’’—incontestable preamble—‘‘ now I see”—inalienable assurance—‘‘ Do 
you also wish to become His disciples ?”—glorious invitation! Missionary activity 
is only the law of the cross in our daily lives, sowing ourselves and reaping a 
harvest, scattering all that we are in all spheres and receiving back multiplied the 
power we scattered. Missionary biography? What is it but the story of men and 
women who felt some of the celestial passion that brought Jesus to this world, and 
buried themselves, as we say, in all lands, and among all races, that from their 
germinal consecration there may be reaped a garner full of saved lives out of the 
very soil in which they sowed themselves. 

(1) It is true of the divine life itself. God had not finished His work when 
He made the material universe. The cosmos is simply the materialization of the 
divine thoughts. The revelation of the divine personality was yet to come. In 
that great resolution, ‘‘ Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”, He 
would duplicate Himself, so far as it was possible, in terms of human life. Man 
was intended to be God’s shadow cast on earth. ‘‘ Weare His offspring”. He is 
a Father and we are to be His sons. The incarnation reveals creation’s ideal. 
Jesus was the divine artist proof of God. Immanuel discloses the meaning of 
image and likeness. Redemption is the process of making us in the image of 
Christ, who is the image of God. Regeneration is that act of the Holy Spirit 
which makes us spiritual. The church is spiritual because it is composed of those 
who have been born of the Spirit. The ideal church is a paraphrase of Christ. 

(2) This must also be true of the Christian life precisely because it is true of 
God’s life. All grades of existence are both limited and stimulated by this law of 
reproduction. Grass of the field produces grass of the field, fish of the sea pro- 
duce fish, fowl of the air perpetuate fowl of the air. There is both conformity to 
type and perpetuation of species. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that 
which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Thoughts produce thoughts, emotions pro- 
duce emotions, volitions produce volitions. Sinners produce sinners, therefore 
avoid them. Christians produce Christians as their spiritual progeny. Mission- 
ary activity is the working out in practical Christian life of this universal law of 
reproduction, the religious analogue of this Edenic method. It explains the zeal 
of prophet and apostle, it interprets the glorious helplessness of those who said, 
‘‘ We cannot but speak the things we have both seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). As 
the church is the divine life in men organizing itself; as sanctification is the divine 
life more and more fully enlarging itself and growing within us; as separation 
from the world, that peculiarity of the people of God which is a mark of the holy 
nation, is only the treating of worldliness as waste, so missionary effort in all 





THE PRINCIPLE OF MISSIONS. 467 


forms is only that divine life multiplying itself in others. The whole mass is 
leavened by multiplication of the yeast germ. Contagion is the method of the 
Kingdom of God. Infinite germination is the process, and that is infinite repro- 
duction. Therefore, how can they believe in Him of whom they have not heard, 
and how shall they hear without a preacher? Life infusing life is the law for God 
and nature and man. Mere machinery is like the dead stick which Gehazi laid on 
the face of the lifeless boy. Therefore no printing press can ever render the pulpit 
obsolete. Individual Christian life sustained by organization, growth, and waste, 
but the species called Christian preserved through this reproduction. The divine 
cause the life of God, the human instrumentality is the personal energy of the 
redeemed man. 

Missions and spiritual vitality are synonymous. We have organization highly 
developed. Weare rich in some rare characters that grow up to bless the world. 
Never as now were religious specialists abounding who say, ‘‘ This one thing I 
do” and count all else as waste. What we need isa vitality that shall reproduce 
ourselves. The decline of interest in missions is not due to the wearing away of 
the romantic sentimental veneer with which missionary life has been overlaid; nor 
to the evaporation of motive; nor to the inroads of ‘‘ new theology” which is said 
to *‘cut the nerve of missions”; nor to any of the many like causes which a shal- 
low observation assigns. It is due to low vitality within ourselves, to an anemic 
spiritual life in individual men and women. The great question which should 
agitate us is not that concerning the state of the heathen after death, but the condi- 
tion of the Christian before death. Our anxieties should center not so much on 
the relation of God’s mercy to those who never heard of Christ as upon the selfish 
indolence of those who profess to know and love the Christ in this life. Within 
myself, into the depths of my own heart, the keen searching probe must be run. 
Am I dead while I have a name to live ? Just here will be found the true explana- 
tion of most of that indifference which we are, in the evil spirit of self-excuse, too 
prone to attribute to other causes. Missionary success is only the extension, 
through the areas of concentric circles, of that first joyous impulse which we 
found in ourselves when we first believed, the enthusiasm for others and the efforts 
to have them share our rapture. This reawakened reproductive energy means joy 
to our own hearts, a revival in our own churches, and the triumph of Christ on 
earth. Let us bring to the quickening Christ all our feebleness and failure, and 
let us count as very little all our ponderous machinery of organization, our attain- 
ments in personal growth, and regard as purely Pharisaic our censure of worldli- 
ness as waste, unless with these functions of life we shall also have in enthusiastic 
abundance that propagating energy which belongs as essentially to genuine life as 
the others. Let every living thing bring forth ‘‘after its kind”. 


SANCTIFICATION THROUGH THE TRUTH. 
(St. JouHn 17: 17.) 
BY REV. HORACE W. TILDEN, D. D., 


PASTOR OF THE LIVERMORE Baptist CHURCH, LIVERMORE FALLS, ME. 


This is one of the shining gems of John. Its light reaches through to the very 
end of an accomplished salvation. The prayer of Jesus is the same as the purpose 
of God. Hence we here learn that it is the plan of the Father to make personally 
holy Christian believers by means of His revealed word. The Holy Spirit is our 
sanctifier, but He employs the Scriptures of truth as an instrumentality in the work. 

Now while this is a divine work and utterly beyond the reach of human power, 
it cannot be that Christians are wholly passive while it is being accomplished. 
Our sympathetic co-operation is required and along the line of the Spirit’s working. 
We must make ourselves familiar with the oracles of truth if we would be sanctified 
through them. Not even the Spirit of God can cleanse us by something that is 
foreign to our thought or life. The water of truth can do nothing for the heart 
unless it can get into familiar contact with it. We must seek the water of the word 
if we would have our iniquities sponged out and our virtues developed. 

We then dare to risk this proposition. The influence of the Holy Spirit upon 
the believer, is proportional to that believer’s sympathetic knowledge of the word 
of truth. The more men saturate their minds with the thoughts of God’s word, the 
freer course will the Spirit have to run through their lives and be glorified. The 
paths of His going are thus many and easily traveled. 

We are aware that certain Christians claim direct communication with the 
Lord apart from the word, and hence put less than full value upon it. But their 
interior voices are not infallible except they abide the test of the inspired standard 
which is the criterion of all spirits. Hence good as the lives of these people gene- 
rally are, they err upon a fundamental point, and as a result their eccentricities are 
often as noticeable as their excellencies. 

But these are not alone among those who slight the word as a means of sancti- 
fication. There are found Christians in almost every community who value highly 
emotional experiences such as are induced by the excitements of large meetings and 
the exhortations of the religiously fervent, and reckon the state of mind so reached 
to be that of complete sanctification. Such emotional experiences must not be 
lightly spoken of, but when they are produced by a mere human excitation of our 
religious natures they soon burn out and leave us poorer than before. 

If you burn the shavings up without setting the wood on fire, you have not 
wherewith to kindle another blaze. It is a mistake to suppose, as these do, that the 
Holy Spirit is the emotional person of the Trinity. He frequently has nothing 
whatever to do with the religious excitements met with, but moves men always by 
solid considerations through the medium of substantial truth. The outward dis- 
play of Pentecost will never be repeated. The kingdom comes without observation. 
Sanctification of character is a sturdy work. It is not effected mainly by an origi- 
nation of sweet emotions, but by a radical renovation of the whole life. It is the 
republication of God’s moral image in every thought and act of the man, and is 


468 





SANCTIFICATION THROUGH THE TRUTH. 469 


often wrought out in storm and winter struggle, as other great achievements are. 

But coming to more direct and positive ground, we find a multitude of Chris- 
tians, so large that it includes almost all, confessing, even lamenting, the lack of 
the Spirit’s power in the churches, and yet who do not see that it is they themselves 
that are compelling the lack. They have clogged the only channel through which 
the Spirit can come to the churches. Preachers and laymen alike are declaring that 
the great crying need of the Christians is the influence of the Holy Spirit upon 
them, and yet they say almost nothing about the divinely prescribed way of enjoy- 
ing that influence without measure. 

The sermon that is preached from the depths of Biblical truth cannot get to 
men without being charged with divine influence. Let the members of a church 
fill thein minds with the gems of inspiration, and their hearts would soon be full of 
the Spirit. But we pray for the presence and power of God upon us and then so 
violate the conditions made that we can feel neither. Weask for God’s blessing and 
then make impossible the blessing we seek. No one doubts the need of the Spirit 
—nor His willingness to bless—and yet we are all the time dwelling on these, and 
meanwhile neglecting the means by which the blessings can come. 

What is the use to come to men in a dark cave, and then tell them their need 
of sunlight; or to accompany hungry men to tell them that they need food? The 
thing to be done is to tell them how to get sunlight and food. God cannot bless 
any man according to His fulness, but according to the man’s receptivity. When 
we know where the blessing comes, we should straightway put ourselves into that 
place. If we seek the sanctification of the Spirit, get divine truth into the heart, 
through which the Spirit works. 

Zachaeus climbed the tree to find out which way Jesus was going and he gained 
a guest anda Saviour in one. Get up into the branches of scripture truth and you 
will find the way the Spirit is going and gain His impulse. 

Our hearts must be turned Zion-ward if we want to reach Zion. A man must 
do the best he can to understand God, with his natural powers, if he would enjoy 
the divine aid. This is the established order, first the natural, then the spiritual. 
The water was, then the wine came to be. Master the truth of the Bible by the use 
of your mental powers as you would master any other truth and then the Spirit 
gives an edge to it, vitalizes it, turns it into veritable food, makes it a lame to melt 
the carnality of the nature, and brings it on towards the current of unselfish living. 

Not only light and heat come from the sunshine, but a third, a chemical quality 
called actinic. The effect is beyond that of light and heat. But this actinic ray 
does not act apart from light and heat, but always in their track, though it is above 
both. So the Spirit’s power is always directed along the line of inspired truth; 
and in proportion as we get fully inline of this truth shall we feel the actinic power 
of our divine Sanctifier. We must prepare the plate if we would have the sun take 
a picture for us. So of our work and the Spirit’s; if we prepare a plate the picture 
will not fail. There is no electricity generated by the electric wire, but when we 
put up the wire as a definite channel it will do the work we ask. So the Holy Spirit 
is evermore filling the moral spaces all about us and as ready to act for our good as 
electricity to act through the wire we stretch for it. But He cannot act for our 
sanctification the best way until we put up the wire. If you want water from the 
reservoir you must not expect it to come unless you lay pipes for its flow. The 
fulness of the fountain will not lay the pipes. All powers of good have their appro- 
priate channel through which to flow, and every reasonable man will look for good 
only in these particular channels. 

A plain duty is thus made manifest. God has not promised to give the Holy 





470 THE GOSPEL OF ST.JOHN. 


Spirit to them who ask, when the asking means no more than the utterance of 
words. It needs to be said again and again that the Holy Spirit does not wield the 
truth in such a way as to relieve man from the study of it. We may complain that 
we lack time for the study of the Bible. We may say that other things absorb all 
our attention, but nothing of the sort can atone for a lack of acquaintance with the 
scriptures of truth, and nothing can supply the loss of the Spirit’s blessing thereby. 
God is not pleased with our compliments to His word, so long as we neglect any 
attention to it. Our hope for a more rapid advancement towards Christ-like char- 
acter lies in better studied Bibles. The trouble with the church is not that it is 
wicked, but that it is weak. The Christian goes about his work with languid step. 
The spirit is willing, but feeble. The churches need a new feast of heavenly bread, 
to give more vigor of holy choice and action. When the hosts of God shall turn 
with greater eagerness to this word of life, then they will go forth to the renewed 
conflict ‘‘terrible as an army with banners”. Christian effort can be sustained 
only by Christian provender. The overflowing life of Jesus coming into believing 
hearts through the Spirit will make the church invincible. 


THE DRAMATIC MOVEMENT IN ST. JOHN’S GOSPEL. 
BY REV. WILLARD BROWN THORP, 


PASTOR OF THE SOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, CHICAGO, ILL. 


Do you remember when first you stumbled upon this ‘‘ Gospel according to 
St. John” inthe old Bible at home in your childhood, and read those strangely 
impressive and mysterious words of the Prologue? 


IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD, AND THE WORD WAS WITH 
Gop, AND THE WorRD wAs Gop. THE SAME WAS IN THE BEGINNING 
witH Gop. ALL THINGS WERE MADE BY HIM; AND WiTHOoUT HIM 
WAS NOT ANYTHING MADE THAT WAS MADE. IN HIM WAS LIFE; AND 
THE LIFE WAS THE LIGHT OF MEN. AND THE LIGHT SHINETH IN 
DARKNESS; AND THE DARKNESS COMPREHENDED IT NOT. 


It is like the opening movement of a great oratorio. And that, perhaps, more 
truly than any other word expresses the quality of this Book of John. 

Then from out that background of primal mystery emerges a human figure, 
the prophet of the wilderness. 


THERE WAS A MAN SENT FROM GOD, WHOSE NAME WAS JOHN. 
THE SAME CAME FOR A WITNESS, TO BEAR WITNESS OF THE LIGHT. 


We find ourselves on the banks of the Jordan where John is baptizing ; and in 
another moment the central figure comes quietly upon the scene. 


BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD, WHICH TAKETH AWAY THE SIN OF 
THE WORLD. 


Not a word of description is given. The Christ is simply presented as moving 
about among the crowds; and one and another of John’s disciples go to Him, and 
are convinced that this is indeed He that is to come. 

Two striking acts of Jesus are now introduced,—one at Cana of Galilee, the 
making of water into wine, which gives us a glimpse of the social surroundings in 
which He had lived; the other in Jerusalem, the driving of the money-changers 
from the temple, with the accompanying outburst of comment and criticism. 
Thus far it has been almost entirely a record of deeds, the words being confined to 
a few laconic utterances. Now action gives place to speech, and we have the night 
incident with Nicodemus, yielding such great sayings as ‘‘ Ye must be born again”’, 
and ‘*God so loved the world”. A day scene follows, by the well at noon in 
Samaria, the conversation with the Samaritan woman leading up to the great 
words : 


Gop IS A SPIRIT: AND THEY THAT WORSHIP HIM MUST WORSHIP 
HIM IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH. 


The action now shifts to Jerusalem: and the healing of a lame man waiting 
his turn at the pool of Bethesda is chosen as the ingident about which gathers a 
discourse in reply to the charge that He ‘‘ not only brake the Sabbath but called 
God His own Father”. 


471 


472 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


And now we come to what may be called the great Third Act in this dramatic 
development. It is the crisis in Galilee; and we have the feeding of the multitude 
by the lake, the attempt to make Him king, the withdrawal into the mountain to 


pray, the storm on the lake, and on the morrow the great discourse centering 
about the words, 


\ 


I AM THE LIVING BREAD WHICH CAME DOWN FROM HEAVEN. 


And as the result of it all we see Him abandoned by all but the Twelve, to whom 
He says, ‘‘ Will ye also go away?” and Peter makes answer, ‘‘ Lord, to whom shall 
we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life”. 

The Fourth Act brings us to Jerusalem and the porches of the temple. We 
see Jesus in the midst of controversy, parrying the thrusts of the scribes and occa- 
sionally uttering great words that ring immortal through the ages. 


I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 

IF ANY MAN WILLETH TO DO His WILL, HE SHALL KNOW OF 
THE TEACHING. 

BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS, I AM. 

YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH, AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU 
FREE. 

I AND THE FATHER ARE ONE. 

I AM THE GOOD SHEPHERD: THE GOOD SHEPHERD LAYETH DOWN 
HIS LIFE FOR THE SHEEP. 


Chapters seven to ten are filled with these things, all leading up to the great 
event of the raising of Lazarus, enshrining the immortal words, 


I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. 


The last act begins in the quiet of Bethany, opens out into the swelling 


strains of the triumphal entry, pauses a moment for discourses which yield such 
sayings as, 


EXCEPT A GRAIN OF WHEAT FALL INTO THE GROUND AND DIE,—and— 
I, 1r I BE LIFTED UP WILL DRAW ALL MEN UNTO MYSELF,— 


then enters the peaceful atmosphere of the upper room for those last discourses 
with the disciples,—and finally breaks into the rude and jarring discords of the 

trial, and the silent and majestic solitude of the cross. The treatment of each of 
’ these scenes, with all the minor episodes, is a consummate work of art. 

And then, after all seems to be over, comes the epilogue of the resurrection, 
which is treated by John with a delicacy of feeling surpassing all the other evan- 
gelists. It is centered about three scenes, that with Mary Magdalene in the 
garden, that with doubting Thomas, and that with Simon Peter by the lake of 
Galilee, with the words, 


Lovest THOU ME? * * * FEED My SHEEP. 


And the Book, which opened with the sonorous notes of the Prologue, ‘‘ In the 
beginning was the Word”, comes down to the level of every-day life in the simple 
words with which the writer lays down his pen, 


And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which 
if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world 
itself would not contain the books that should be written. 


Se 








DRAMATIC MOVEMENT IN ST. JOHN’S GOSPEL. 473 


Such in merest outline is the presentation which this Book makes of the life of 
Christ. We see at once that it is no mere chronicle. It is a work of art, a literary 
composition of the highest order, with a dramatic unity and progress which would 
make it an admirable basis for a great oratorio. As soon as we grasp this fact, we 
have the explanation of many of those striking differences that exist between it 
and the other three Gospels, which are comparatively artless records of such recol- 
lections of Jesus’ words and works as survived in the early church. 





*ST. JOHN’S TEACHING OF FATHERHOOD AND SONSHIP. 


BY RT. REV. FREDERIC DAN HUNTINGTON, S. T. D., 
TD es eee, Ds. 


LATE BisHoPp OF CENTRAL NEW YORK. 


Whatever view Christian believers may take of the person, or the char- 
acter, or the doctrine, of the Fourth Evangelist, or in whatever aspect he 
may be presented to the mind of the Christian Church, his chief claim upon 
our reverence, our confidence, and our obedient attention must rest on what 
he affirms of God. Manifold and luminous as are the subjects of study 
belonging to him, as Apostle, Evangelist, Instructor, Author and Beloved 
Disciple, yet superior to every other element in his greatness, is his authority 
as an inspired witness to the ministry and mediation of the second Person in 
the Trinity, God the Son. No Biblical writer creates an impression of living 
and speaking so habitually and completely encompassed in an atmosphere dis- 
tinctly supernatural, or, to use the word more strictly accurate and descriptive, 
superhuman. Without the slightest qualification of a full and entire humanity, 
or manhood, he adds to every intellectual and temperamental quality that of 
dwelling in the serenity, purity and radiance of a world other than this. The 
voice speaking out of that loftier sphere is never so penetrating or commanding 
as when it assures us of the mind and will and love of Him to whom both worlds 
belong. By virtue of this divine eminence he is distinctively the apostolic theo- 
logian, to a higher degree than St. Peter or even than St. Paul. 

Verifying this statement we need to look not much beyond the indefinable 
but yet definite style and tone of everything preserved to us that John wrote. 
That it should not have suppressed or forbidden a large part of the strained and 
narrow criticism, beyond any necessity of truth or scholarship, which has at- 
tempted to invalidate the evidence for the genuineness of his Gospel is discredit- 
able to literary candor. This Gospel, without systematic or scientific intention, 
on its face, with a form and method singularly original, is a demonstration from 
end to end, of our Lord’s divinity. No such object, on the part of the writer, is 
expressly apparent on its pages. As a biography, or an abridgement or fragment 
of one, without pretention or formality, it opens the eternal mystery of revelation 
with the utmost simplicity of narrative and with unadorned reports of dialogue, of 
divinely exalted meditation, and of marvellous discourse, which all after-ages were 
to read, study and ponder. But the special wonder is this. While, in no one 
expression, and no specific affirmation, is Christ represented as declaring Himself 
to be God, and in no language that a serious Gnostic could reject, yet the evangel 
as a whole offers a demonstration of his superhuman nature and relations such as 


* This article is especially valued as it was written only a few months (September, 1903) before 
Bishop Huntington’s death, He wrote that he felt at first he could not accede to the request to contribute 
for the series in the press, but “‘ since coming to that decision I have been particularly struck with the 
repeated repetition of the name ‘Father’ by our Lord in relation to the First and Second Persons in the 
Trinity. This impression was so strong that I put my thoughts about it at once in writing”. To all who 
knew Bishop Huntington, this article will prove peculiarly reminiscent of the early period of a long and 
distinguished career. 


474 


TEACHING OF FATHERHOOD AND SONSHIP. 475 


no Unitarian ventures to question, and at which even the Arian stands in awe. 
After the Oriental proem the book is one uniform, consistent, unvarying represen- 
tation of the relation of oneness between two Persons, God and Jesus Christ, 
under the personal names and natures of Father and Son. Read the whole through, 
with this in mind, and this peculiarity of Fatherhood and Sonship becomes more 
and more signal and remarkable. As a proof of the absolute unity or oneness of 
the two in their nature, and so of the Saviour’s proper divinity, nothing could be 
more conclusive. Parent and child, two personalities with one and the same 
nature, need neither analogy nor illustration. 

Yet there can be no denying the fact that an unorthodox and uncatholic 
theology has extensively used this fact of parental and filial relationship to sup- 
port the heretical theory of Christ’s inferiority or subordination to the Creator, 
the Jehovah of the Old Testament and the monotheist’s only Deity. 

How is that error to be met? 

1. In the human generation, the inferiority of the Son to the Father is 
temporary, not permanent. 

2. It does not necessarily or uniformly imply superiority in the parent, 
intellectual, moral, physical, or any kind of power. 

3. The Catholic doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son sets a final 
limit to the force of the analogy and its doctrinal use in the Creed. 

4. Inevery possible form of teaching short of an explicit and literal dec- 
laration, St. John’s Gospel provides scriptural authority for the Nicene 
formula. 


Assuming the genuineness and authenticity of the First Epistle of St. John, 
that Epistle sustains the Trinitarian dogmatic teaching of the Gospel. 





A HIDDEN REVELATION. 


\ 


(Sr. JoHN 21: 15-17.) 
BY REV. JAMES CHURCH ALVORD, 
PASTOR OF THE GLOBE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, Woonsocket, R. I. 


It is one of the misfortunes of English readers of the Bible that certain very 
delicate and subtle shades of thought lurk, untranslatable, or at least untranslated, 
in the original languages. This is particularly true of the Greek of the New Tes- 
tament. This paper takes for its whole subject one such illusive turn of thought 
in the last chapter of John. 

This chapter was added after the rest of the book had been written. The 
closing verse of the twentieth chapter is evidently intended to finish the Gospel as 
well. That the ‘‘ beloved disciple” felt the story of the twenty-first chapter too 
personal, too intimate, that he shrank from revealing this wondrous prophecy of 
Jesus concerning himself is certain. By what means, or by whose urging he was 
induced to add this heavenly tale, we know not. All we know is that we have it, a 
treasure beyond purchase. Let that suffice. 

We are not, however, dwelling on this whole great treasure, but on one special 
pearl in the garland, somewhat dimmed and clouded by its English setting. This 
pearl you will find in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth verses of the chapter. 
Here is recorded a conversation between Jesus and Peter. There is a question, 
‘* Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?” andan answer, ‘‘ Yea, Lord; Thou know- 
est that I love Thee”, followed by a command, ‘‘ Feed My sheep”. It is true that 
this last phrase is better rendered ‘‘ Shepherd—or tend—My sheep”; that there is 
an added touch of the infinite tenderness of Christ in the fact that He first entreats, 
‘*Shepherd My lambs”, even before He thinks of the wandering sheep, but it is 
not of this that we are speaking. Suggestively tempting as these two thoughts 
are, we pass them by. 

The main, the primal thing lies in the meaning of that word translated love. 
It is two words. Inthe English there is but one, ‘‘Lovest thou Me?” **T love 
Thee”; as if the Master and the disciple caught at the same term. This is just 
what they did not do. For there are two kinds of loving, and two Greek words for 
loving. The English has but one. So we are fain to bungle at the subtle, the 
evasive, the profound revelation here recorded. 

Now, the first kind of loving is the love we bear for men at large, for the world 
or for the church universal, for the truth, for a neighbor, for an enemy. This the 
Greeks called by a word yet remaining for us in English in the noun, **‘ Agape”, 
by which we designate the love feasts of the early Christians—a word sometimes 
found among the Methodists and the Salvationists of our own generation. There 
is no equivalent for this idea in our vocabulary. ‘‘ Esteem” is too chilly; *‘adore” 
too high flown; ‘‘love” too personal. Let us translate it in this talk, bitterly as 
we shall wrong it, by the verb ‘‘ esteem”. 

But there is another style of love, and another Greek word for it, too. This is” 
the love a man has for his father, his mother,-his brother, most of all for the 
maiden he would wed. This also is preserved for us—rather say mummified—in 


476 


A HIDDEN REVELATION. 477 


the English ‘“‘ philter”. Love-philter, we call it, but that is tautology. for philter 
is itself a love charm—a charm that will awaken in a woman the changeless aftec- 
tion of a wife. This second Greek verb, this philter verb, I translate ‘* love”. 

Now, do you not see the immense significance of the fact that the first time 
Jesus speaks He uses the word for the agapxe—love? ‘*‘Simon, son of Jonas, 
esteemest thou Me?” That is, lovest thou Me in the large, general way, as thou 
oughtest to love the church, the brethren, the world for whose sake thou shalt be 
crucified? That is a large demand, but Peter. timid, faltering, tumultuous Peter, 
overleaps its boundaries. Peter will have naught to do with such diluted phrases. 
He turns to the sweet and solemn thoughts of household affection and cries, ‘*‘I 
love Thee”. Thou art to me father, brother, child and wife; ‘‘I love Thee”. The 
quick change of term, the proffer of this warm and clinging fondness, touches the 
Master. But He asks again, ‘‘ Simon, son of Jonas, esteemest thou Me?” Again 
the passionate soul of Peter changes the verb. Again the confession, *‘ 1 love Thee”. 
Then comes the splendor of it, the glory of it. At the third asking Jesus uses 
Peter's word, and questions, “‘Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?” It is an 
incident, a chance play on words,—aye, it is more. It isa revelation. By a mas- 
terly insistance Peter has drawn from the Saviour the statement that the love bind- 
ing us to Him flows from the searlet rush of human blood. It goes way down into 
the depths, and tugs at familiar heart strings. We love Jesus as we love the little 
circle around the breakfast table in the home,—and He responds like love for like. 
There is no face dearer than the face of the Master—nay, not even a mother’s. 
There is no hand more clinging than the hand of the Master—nay, not even a son’s. 
There is no heart nearer than the heart of the Master—nay. not even a wife’s. One 
of the family He is. He sits at our daily board, He bends beside our heavy task. 
He watches our troubled slumber, He sticketh closer than a brother thoughrall the 
world desert us. That heart-cry out from the midst of the Old Testament is ours 
today. We, too, can say, “‘ Very pleasant art Thou unto me, my brother Jesus: 
Thy love to me is wonderful, surpassing the love of women”. 

Very many other things is this Redeemer of ours,—Lord of peoples, Light of 
nations, Saviour of the whole world, Hope of the human race; but to you and me 
forever and forever is He still ‘‘elder Brother, tender Friend”. Long before 
Charles Wesley saw the light of day. Peter, the son of Jonas, hid in the Greek of 
this Gospel, that last and greatest title of the Lord Christ. ‘* Jesus, lover of my 
Soul”. 


v= 


THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 
BY REV. C. A. Ih. RICHARDS, D. D., 


ReEcroR EMERITUS OF ST. JOHN’s EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PROVIDENCE, R. I. 


However we regard the Gospel of John, as the work of an apostle directly cog- 
nizant of the teaching and life of Jesus, or as the work of a later disciple of the 
Master who died and rose again, and whose power of self-revelation therefore was 
not limited to three years beneath the Syrian blue, of one thing we are sure, that 
he who wrote it cared more for the spirit than for the letter of his Lord’s teaching, 
and that the spirit of Jesus was to him especially a spirit of love. Though it was 
Paul, not John, who wrote the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians and drew love’s 
portrait in such glowing colors, yet it is John who is known through the churches 
as the apostle of love. The glory that Paul saw and portrayed John livedin. Its 
atmosphere was his daily breath. He felt that it was the Master’s habitual 
atmosphere, and it isas love incarnate, love for a season tabernacled in our flesh, 
that John most clearly revealed Him. 

He who wore our flesh still wears it. ‘The church is His body. In the church 
then love eternal, ever living love, is to-day entabernacled. How far is the 
casket worthy of the Jewel? How far is the shrine fit for Him who looks out 
from it on the world? How far is the body the facile instrument of the Spirit 
of Jesus who condescends to inhabit it ? 

John tells us that Jesus prayed that His disciples might be one even as He and 
His Father were one, lin them and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into 
one. Nineteen centuries have gone by. Is that prayer yet fully answered? Is the 
unity of Christendom the most visible fact as men to-day behold it? 

I open my Saturday’s paper and find the advertised services for the Lord’s 
Day that is to follow. They are multitudinous. They represent not one broad 
Holy Catholic Church, which is the communion of all who are or would be saints, 
but endless divisions and sub-divisions of it. If we think of them as the voices of 
Christian worship, they must be heard, not in one great vaulted temple, but in 
endless side chapels thereof. The central nave is empty, the common worship 
Silent; but all round the circuit of the walls go up various conflicting prayers and 
praises. Yet as incense from a hundred altars may rise distinct and several 
columns towards heaven, while, as it ascends, those columns draw together and 
become one common cloud,—so from the countless jarring and discordant voices 
may rise at last a common chord of praise, a harmony richer and fuller than any 
unison. 

Our Lord’s prayer lays no emphasis upon any numerical or visible unity. 
It is a prayer that His disciples may be one as He and His Father are one, a unity 
which the Athanasian creed expresses by the scholastic phrase ‘‘ neither con- 
founding the persons nor dividing the substance”. If, then, the several bodies of 
believers, while separate in organization and activity, were of one heart, so that 
the spiritual union was real and substantial while the ecclesiastical severance was 
but formal and accidental, it might well be argued that there still remained the 
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and that the church was one. 

It is very possible to exaggerate the significance of divided Christendom, to 


478 





THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 479 


overestimate the necessity of structural unity. Certainly catholicity is of the spirit, 
not of the letter. Great churches may display the petty mood of the schismatic 
and sectarian, while in the minutest subdivision of Christian people may yet be 
nurtured a love of the whole rather than the part, a joy in the common heritage of 
believers. Yet who can fail to perceive that the fragmentary condition of Chris- 
tendom is highly symbolical? It expresses and suggests the actual ravages of 
the spirit of sect, of party, the spirit that magnifies differences. The cities may 
scarcely feel this, but the villages bitterly recognize the truth. In little hamlets 
whose worshippers could easily be sheltered in a single modest church and be 
served by a single minister, three, four, half a dozen, perhaps, of Christian so- 
cieties strive for preeminence. Each zealously seeks to extend its jurisdiction, to 
multiply its adherents, to crowd out its neighbors, to survive in the struggle. 
They emphasize their oppositions. Each down in his inmost depths believes in 
one Lord, one faith, one brotherhood, one God over all, one Saviour for all, and 
desires first of all the glory of the one kingdom. Yet each seems mainly con- 
cerned, practically occupied in rearing fences and nursing hedges and constructing 
earth-works, and the world scornfully looks on to see the landmarks so visible and 
the tillage of the field so poor. 

There are those who would not defend who yet excuse the present divisions of 
Christendom as not without use, as stimulating a healthy rivalry, as spurring to 
competitive enterprise, as on the whole furthering the general growth. They 
argue that there is more room for individuality, that the divisions of Christendom 
may be held to be a useful and providential ordering, and that organic church 
unity is but a mystic dream. As long as a narrow and false conception of the 
church prevails, as long as men insist upon agreement in opinion, on rigidity of 
structure, on uniformity in ritual, so long sects and parties may be the inevitable 
recoil and reaction, may afford the only opportunity in which differing natures 
find room to breathe and space to move. So long as a man may bea saint of 
God ripe for His presence, yet without home or welcome in any particular body 
of believers; so long as the Anglican Church can find no room for Baxter or 
Wesley, and the Lutheran Church no room for Zwingle, and New England Con- 
gregationalism no room for Channing, and Unitarianism no room for Parker, and 
Northern and Southern orthodoxy alike no room for Garrison, divisions are the 
natural consequence, the providential remedy. If the church general be built too 
small to shelter on earth the destined denizens of heaven, all sorts of out-build- 
ings, rude sheds, dwarfed temples, rickety chapels, make-shift conventicles will 
spring up, a mushroom growth, on every side about it. Its bigotry palliates their 
schism. Yet schism and bigotry are evils both. Woe unto them who offend, but 
woe unto them who cause offense. Both may be forgiven, but neither can be 
justified, and who of us dare say that he is without sin in this regard ? 

Certainly the Christian ideal is of one body with one spirit. Certainly 
spiritual unity is more effectively symbolized and expressed by one organic struct- 
ure than by a hundred independent and unrelated growths. If we were one in 
heart how naturally would we approximate in life. What an impressive and con- 
vincing spectacle it would be to a jarring and wrangling world. See how these 
Christians love one another, see how closely they are knit together, how they 
harmonize their discords, forget their differences, magnify their points of agree- 
ment, how every sort of sage and saint, of lowly penitent, of anxious believer, of 
eager worker finds room and verge enough, large liberty and full opportunity in 
this body of redeemed humanity, this glad family, this imperial community. 
Could we but show the darkened realm of heathendom this splendid vision! But, 












480 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


oh—the difference! What moral weight is lost by our fragmentary co 
what force is scattered and wasted! ie d 
It is idle to look for corporate union until spiritual harmony has prec 
The one church must come, not by surrender of this part to that, or abso 
this part in that, but in a common submission to one Lord who shall be P 
Peace. As we bow beneath His Spirit we shall perceive how few things in) 
are essential, that love is indeed the one thing needful, the sure cement of 
Already men care less for opinion and more for character ; less for theory 
for practice; less for intellectual adhesion, more for moral conformity; les 
mint, anise and cummin, more for weightier matters of gospel and law. | 
quarters are found those who watch for the morning, who are asking not 
must we demand as the price of reconciliation, but what can we yield and sacrifi 
that has been familiar and dear. With that mood God’s people are drawn tog 
and the time hastens when the church shall indeed be one. Why in the twer 
century may not the miracle be wrought ? 


ST. JOHN: IN» ALL, AGES. 


‘© That little book is a still deeper sea, in which the sun and stars are mirrored, 
and if there are eternal truths (and such there are) for the human race, they are 
found in the Gospel of John ”’.—Aerder. 

‘This Gospel is the consummation of the Gospels, as the Gospels are of all 
the Scriptures ”.— Origen. 

“This is the unique, tender, genuine, chief Gospel. * * * Shoulda tyrant 
succeed in destroying the Holy Scriptures and only a single copy of the Epistle to 
the Romans and the Gospel according to John escape him, Christianity would be 
saved ”.—Luther. 

‘* The first three evangelists give us diverse aspects of one glorious landscape. 

_St. John pours over that landscape-a flood of heavenly sunshine, which seems to 
transfigure its very character, though every feature of the landscape remains the 
same ”.—Farrar. 

‘*The Gospel of John is the most original, the most important, the most influ- 
ential book in all literature. * * * It is simple asa child and sublime as a 
seraph, gentle as a lamb and bold as an eagle, deep as the sea and high as the 
heavens ”.— Schaff- 

““The Fourth Gospel is the heart of Christ”.—Erzesti. 

** The Gospel of the world, resolving reason into intuition and faith into sight”. 
— Westcott. 

‘*The diamond among the Gospels ”.—Lazge. 

“*The most wonderful of all religious books ”.—Bzedermann. 

““ Written by the hand of an angel”’.—Herder. 

‘It is a Gospel for the height and likewise for the depth”.—Da Costa. 

“The Plato of the inspired circle”.—aufman. 

“* John does not argue, he sees, he soars; the eagle is his symbol”.—Schaf. 

Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe is said to have remarked in reference to a certain 
magazine of great literary merit, but at one time somewhat imbued with sceptical 
thought: ‘‘I like to read it, but when I have laid it down, I always read a chapter 
in the Gospel of John ”.— 

“If the heart studies the Christ as portrayed in this writing, it will need no 
other proof of His divinity ”.—ZUlico?t. 

**This Gospel speaks a language to which no parallel whatever is to be found 
in the whole compass of literature; such childlike simplicity, with such contempla- 
tive profundity ; such life and such deep rest; such sadness and such severity; and 
above all, such a breath of love”.—Tholuck. 

“These brief sentences * * * as inexhaustible in thought as they are 
inartificial in language”.—Dr. Alexander Maclaren. 

*“* Above all do I like to read the Gospel of John”.—Claudius (German poet). 

“Bird of God! with boundless flight 
Soaring far beyond the height 
Of the bard or prophet old; 
Truth fulfilled and truth to be— 
Never purer mystery 


Did a purer tongue unfold”. 
—FPoet of the Middle Ages. 
481 


482 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


‘*The doctrine of the Word made flesh shows us God uniting Himself most 
intimately with our nature, manifesting Himself in a human form, for the very end 
of making us partners of His own perfection ”.—Channing. 

‘** John’s Gospel shows us how deep a sense Jesus had of being a stranger on 
the earth”.—Beyschlag. 

‘‘In the Four Gospels, or rather in the four books of the one Gospel, the 
Apostle St. John has lifted higher and far more sublimely than the other three his 
proclamation, and in lifting it up he has wished our hearts also to be lifted”.— 
Augustine. 

‘‘It was he who bequeathed to the world in his three works the three-fold 
picture of the life in God; in the person of Christ (the Gospel); in the Christian 
(the Epistles); and inthe church (the Apocalypse). He anticipated more perfectly 
than any other the festival of the eternal life ”.— Godet. 

‘For, verily, beneath the tranquil surface of this Gospel, which is filled to so 
great an extent with what the Lord Himself said, are deep and fervid ocean-currents 
of holy life and love, which no one can undertake to explore and describe without 
being made to feel the dimness of his vision and the feebleness of his speech ”.— 
Flovey. 

‘« Since Irenaeus it has remained for the sons of the apostolic spirit the crown 
of the apostolic Gospels ”.—Lange. 

“The last proposition,—the Word was God,—is against Arius; the other,—the 
Word was with God,—is against Sabellius ”.—Zuther. 

‘* St. John expresses the Divine voice with absolute authority of spiritual life 
and death in the present and the future. * * * Through the study of the 
Apocalypse, we are able in a vague and dim way to understand how that long drawn 
out living death in Patmos was the necessary training through which he must pass 
who should write the Fourth Gospel. In no other way could man rise to that 
superhuman level in which the Fourth Gospel is pitched and be able to gaze with 
steady, unwavering eyes on the eternal and the Divine, and to remain so uncon- 
scious of the ephemeral world ”.—Professor W. M. Ramsay. 





“Tf 1 live yet, it is for good, more love 
Through me to men: be nought but ashes here 
That keep awhile my semblance, who was John,— 
Still, when they scatter, there is left on earth 
No one alive who knew (consider this!) 
—Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands 
That which was from the first, the Word of. Life. 
How will it be when none more saith, ‘I saw’?” 


* * * *¥ * * * 


“To me, that story—ay, that Life and Death 
Of which I wrote ‘it was ’—to me, it is; 
—Is, here and now: I apprehend nought else”. 


* * * * * * * 


“What do I hear say, or conceive men say, 
‘ Was John at all, and did he say he saw? 
Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!’ ” 


* * * * * * 
“ Such is the burden of the latest time. 


I have survived to hear it with my ears, 
Answer it with my lips: does this suffice? 


ST. JOHN IN ALL AGES. 483 


For if there be a further woe than such, 
Wherein my brothers struggling need a hand, 
So long as any pulse is left in mine, 
May I beabsent even longer yet, 
Plucking the blind ones back from the abyss, 
Though I should tarry a new hundred years!” 
Browning: “A Death in the Desert”. 

‘* Whether we regard the sublimity of its thought, the width and spirituality of 
its conception of religion, the depth of its moral insight, or the tragic pathos of its 
story, we cannot but feel that we have before us the work of a master mind. And 
when we remember how it has moulded the faith and touched the heart and calmed 
the sorrows of generations of men, we must approach it with no ordinary reverence, 
and witha desire to penetrate its inmost meaning and become more thoroughly 
imbued with its kindling power”.—Dr. James Drummond. 

‘*We would not willingly give up for any other form of narrative a Gospel 
which reveals to us what the Christ grew to be in the mind of one who leaned on 
His bosom in youth, had cherished a perpetual recollection of Him throughout 
long years of toiland suffering for His name, and at the close wrote as in his 
Master’s very presence his testimony to what his Master had been and forever 
should be—the Light and the Life of men”.—Dr. Armitage Robinson, Canon of 


Westminster. 





PROGRAMS 


Of the CONFERENCES 





INDICES 


TO AUTHORS AND TEXTS 





PROGRAMS OF THE CONFERENCES. 


FIRST CONFERENCE. (CuHapter I.) 


* Held Wednesday, October 21, 1903, at the First Baptist Church, Rey. Henry M. King, D.D., 
presiding. 
MORNING. 


10.00. The Prologue to the Gospel of St. John. St. John 1: 1-18. 
Professor Clark S. Beardslee, D.D., Hartford Theological Seminary, 
Hartford, Conn. 
Discussion. - 
11.00. Men and Events in the Time of Jesus. 
Professor Charles F. Sitterly, Ph.D., S.T.D., Drew Theological 
Seminary, Madison, N. J. 
Discussion. 
11.45. John the Baptist and His Testimony to Jesus. St. John 1: 19-37. .: 
Professor William Arnold Stevens, D.D., LL.D., Rochester Theological 
Seminary, Rochester, N. Y. 
Discussion. 
AFTERNOON. 
2.30. The Study of the Gospel of St. John. 
Professor Wilbert W. White, Ph.D., President Bible Teachers Train- 
ing School, New York. 
3-15. ‘* Full of Grace and Truth”. St. John 1: 14. 
Professor Henry S. Nash, D.D., Episcopal Theological School, 
Cambridge, Mass. 
Discussion. 
4.00 The Calling of the First Disciples. St. John 1 : 38-51. 
Rev. A. C. Dixon, D.D., Pastor of the Ruggles Street Baptist Church, 
Boston, Mass. 
EVENING. 
7.30. The First Chapter of St. John. 
President Wilbert W. White, Ph.D., New York. 
§.30. Power to Become the Sons of God. St. John 1: 12. 
Rev. Floyd W. Tomkins, S.T.D., Rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal 
Church, Philadelphia, Penn. 





SECOND CONFERENCE. (Cuapters II, III, IV.) 
t Held Wednesday, November 11, 1903, at the Mathewson Street Methodist Episcopal Church, Rev. 
Charles M. Melden, Ph.D., D.D., presiding. 
MORNING. 
10.00. The Miracle at Cana and a Philosophical Discussion of Miracles. 
St. John 2:1-11. 
President Augustus H. Strong, D.D., LL.D., 
Rochester Theological Seminary, Rochester, N. Y. 
Discussion. 


* At each Conference the presiding officer was the pastor or rector of the church at which the Confer- 
ence was held, Each session was begun with a brief devotional service. 


tj Rev. Carter E. Cate, D.D., Pastor of the Roger Williams Free Baptist Church, and Chairman of 
the Conference Committee, presided at the evening session. 


487 


488 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 





11.00. The Optimism of Jesus. St. John 4: 1-42. 
Rev. Frank J. Goodwin, Pastor of the Pawtucket Congregational Church, 
Pawtucket, R. I. 
Discussion. 
11.45. Jesus and Nicodemus—The New Birth. St. John 3: 1-15. 
Rev. Edward Abbott, D.D., Rector of St. James’s Episcopal Church, 
Cambridge, Mass. 


Discussion. 


AFTERNOON. 
2.30. Eternal Life through Belief. St. John 3: 14-21. 
Rev. Albert H. Plumb, D.D., 
Pastor of the Walnut Avenue Congregational Church, Boston, Mass. 


Discussion. 


3-15. The Gospel of John in the Spiritual Life of the Churches. 
Rev. Henry M. King, D.D., Pastor of the First Baptist Church, 
Providence, R. I. 


Discussion. 


4.15. The Source or Condition of Jesus’ Strength. St. John 4:34. 
Rey. Willis P. Odell, D.D., Pastor of Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church, 
New York. 


EVENING. 
7-30. Some Characteristics of the Gospel according to St. John. 


Rey. Alexander McKenzie, D.D., Pastor of the First Church, 
Congregational, Cambridge, Mass. 


THIRD CONFERENCE. (Cuapters V, VI.) 


*Held Wednesday, December 9, 1903, at the Beneficent Congregational Church, Rey. Asbury F. 
Krom, presiding. 
MORNING. 
10.00. The Works of Jesus. I. Resurrection. St. John 5: 17-30. 
Rev. George P. Eckman, Ph.D., D.D., Pastor of St. Paul’s Methodist 
Episcopal Church, New York. 
Discussion. 


10.45. +The Secret of Jesus’ Life. St. John 5 :30. 
Rey. John Balcom Shaw, D.D., Pastor of the West End Presbyterian 
Church, New York. 


Discussion. 


11.30. Jesus the Bread of Life. St. John 6: 30-59. 
Rev. Cornelius Woelfkin, Pastor of the Greene Avenue Baptist Church, 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 
Discussion. 


* Rey. James G. Vose, D.D., Pastor Emeritus of the Beneficent Church, presided at the afternoon 
session, and Rey. Arthur M. Aucock, Rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, at the evening session. 

t Owing to Dr. Shaw’s unavoidable detention in New York, this address was postponed to the February 
Conference. 


PROGRAMS OF THE CONFERENCES. 489 


AFTERNOON. 


2.30. Symposium by Rhode Island Pastors and Laymen on the Gospel of St. 
John in the Churches. 
3.30. Belief the Spring of Religious Action. St. John 6 :29.” 
President N. E. Wood, D.D., Newton Theological Institution, 
Newton Centre, Mass. 


Discussion. 
EVENING. 


The Confession of Peter—Christ, the World’s only Hope and Life. St. 
John 6 : 68, 69. 
Professor Henry S. Nash, D. D., Episcopal Theological School, 
Cambridge, Mass. 


~ 
Go 
9 





FOURTH CONFERENCE. (Cuapters VII, VIII, IX, X.) 


* Held Wednesday, January 13, 1904, at Grace Episcopal Church, Rey. Edmund S. Rousmaniere, 
presiding. 


MORNING. 


10.00. Unbelief the Fundamental Sin. 

Rey. B. L. Whitman, D.D., LL. D., Pastor of the Fifth Baptist Church, 

Philadelphia, Penn. 
10.45. The Personal Equation in the Gospel of St. John. 
Rev. Frederic Palmer, A. M., Rector of Christ Church, Andover, Mass. 

11.30. Spirit and Life. St. John 7 : 37-39. 

Rey. Amory H. Bradford, D.D., Pastor of the First Congregational Church, 

Montclair, N. J. 


AFTERNOON. 


2.30. The Controversies of Jesus with the Jews. 
Professor Melancthon W. Jacobus, D.D., Hartford Theological Semi- 
nary, Hartford, Conn. 
3.15. The Evidential Value of Miracles. 
Professor Charles W. Rishell, Ph.D., Boston University School of 
Theology, Boston, Mass. 
4.00. The Sinlessness of Jesus. 
Rey. William R. Huntington, D.D., Rector of Grace Episcopal Church, 
New York. 
EVENING. 
7-30. Knowledge of the Teaching of Jesus through the Doing of the Will of God. 
St. John 7 : 17. 
Rey. Francis J. McConnell, Ph.D., Pastor of the New York Avenue Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
8.15. Freedom Through the Truth. St. John 8 : 31-36. 


Rey. Everett D. Burr, D.D., Pastor of the First Baptist Church in Newton, 
Newton Centre, Mass. 


* Rey. Arthur M. Aucock, Rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, presided at the afternoon session. 


we 


490 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


FIFTH CONFERENCE. (Cuaprers XI, XII, XIII.) 
* Held Wednesday, February 10, 1904, at the Central Baptist Church, Rev. John R. Brown, presiding 
MORNING. 


10.00. Mysticism in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the 
Fourth Gospel. 
Professor Alfred Williams Anthony, D.D., Cobb Divinity School, 
Lewiston, Maine. 
10.45. The Works of Jesus. II. Judgment. St. John 5: 17-30. 
Rev. Charles M. Melden, Ph.D., D.D., Pastor of the Mathewson Street 
Methodist Episcopal Church, Providence, R. I. 
11.30. The Secret of Jesus’ Life. St. John 5:30. 
Rev. John Balcom Shaw, D.D., Pastor of the West End Presbyterian 
Church, New York. 


AFTERNOON. 


2.30. The Light of the World. St. John 12:46. (Compare St. John 8: 12.) 
Rey. Willard Scott, D.D., Pastor of the Piedmont Congregational Church, 
Worcester, Mass. 
3.15. The Attracting Power of the Cross. St. John 12:32. 
Rey. Avery A. Shaw, M.A., Pastor of the Baptist Church in Brookline, 
Brookline, Mass. 


EVENING. 


7.30. How the Gospel was made. 
Professor Frederick L. Anderson, D.D., Newton Theological Insti- 
tution, Newton Centre, Mass. 
8.15. The Washing of the Disciples’ Feet and the Law of Service. St. John 13 : 1-17. 
Rev. Edwin Alonzo Blake, Ph.D., D.D., Pastor of the Tremont Street 
Methodist Episcopal Church, Boston, Mass. 


SIXTH CONFERENCE. (CuaptTers XIV, XV, XVI.) 

j Held Wednesday, March g, 1904, at the Trinity Union Methodist Episcopal Church, Rey. J. Francis 

Cooper, presiding. 
MORNING. 
10.00. The Presence of the Father, Son and Spirit through Obedience to the 
Commands of Christ. St. John 14 : 21-23. 
Rev. Robert A. Ashworth, M.A., Pastor First Baptist Church, Meriden, 
Conn. 


Discussion. 


11.00. }The Method of Jesus with Individuals. St. John 3 : 1-16 and 4 :5-26. 
President William Douglas Mackenzie, D.D., Hartford Theological 
Seminary, Hartford, Conn. 
Discussion. 

* Rev. Edward C. Bass, D.D., Pastor of the Tabernacle Methodist Episcopal Church, presided at 
the evening session. 

} Rt. Rey. William N. McVickar, S.T.D., Bishop of Rhode Island, presided at the evening session. 

} As President Mackenzie could not be present at this hour, his was the opening address of the afternoon 
session. 






— | 


PROGRAMS OF THE CONFERENCES. 491 


AFTERNOON. 
2.30. The Vine and the Branches. St. John 15: 1-16. 
Rev. John T. Beckley, D.D., Pastor of the Central Baptist Church, New- 
port, R. I. 
3-15. The Seventeenth Chapter of St. John. 
Professor Henry T. Fowler, Ph.D., Brown University, Providence, R. I. 
4.00. The Glorification of the Son of Man. St. John 13:31, 32. 
Professor Samuel Hart, D.D., D.C.L., Berkeley Divinity School, 
Middletown, Conn. 
EVENING. 
7.30. Obedience to the New Commandment the Proof of Discipleship. St. John 
13 + 34> 35- 
Rev. Rockwell H. Potter, Pastor of the First Congregational Church, 
Hartford, Conn. 
8.15. The Coming of the Greeks and the Law of Sacrifice. St. John 12: 20-32. 
Rev. Henry C. Mabie, D.D., Home Secretary of the American Baptist 
Missionary Union, Boston, Mass. 


SEVENTH CONFERENCE. (Cuarters XVII, XVIII, XIX.) 
* Held Wednesday, April 13, 1904, at the Central Congregational Church, Rey. Edward F, Sanderson, 
presiding, 
MORNING. 
10.00. The Teaching Function of the Church. 
Professor Frank K. Sanders, Ph. D., D.D., Yale Divinity School, New 
Haven, Conn. 


10.45. Jesus the Revelation of the Father. St. John 14: 6-11. 
Professor Henry C. Sheldon, $.T.D., Boston University School of Theology, 
Boston, Mass. 
11.30. The Twenty-First Chapter of St. John. 
President Henry G. Weston, D.D., LL. D., Crozer Theological Seminary, 
Chester, Penn. 


AFTERNOON. 
2.30. The Self-Surrender of Jesus Christ. St. John 18:11. 
Rev. George M. Stone, D.D., Pastor of the Asylum Avenue Baptist Church, 
Hartford, Conn. 
3-15. The Crucifixion—‘‘It is Finished”. St. John 19: 30. 
Rt. Rev. Thomas A. Jaggar, D.D., Bishop of Southern Ohio, Cincinnati, 
Ohio. 


EVENING. 
7-30: The Home at Bethany and the Friendships of Jesus. 
Rey. Donald Sage Mackay, D.D., Pastor of the Fifth Avenue Collegiate 
Church, New York. 
8.15. The Unity of Christianity as Revealed in the Prayer of Christ. St. John 17. 
Professor Henry S. Nash, D.D., Episcopal Theological School, Cam- 
bridge, Mass. 
* Rev. Fred B. Hill, Assistant Pastor of the Central Church, presided at the afternoon session, and 


Rey. Andrew J. Coultas, Presiding Elder of the Providence District of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
presided at the evening session. 


492 


Held Wednesday, May 11, 1904, at All Saints Memorial Church, Rev. Arthur M. Aucock, presiding. 


10.30. 


Let 5.5 


N 
oP) 
‘. 


ioe) 
iat 
eA 


THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 





EIGHTH CONFERENCE. (CuHAprerRs XX, XXI.) 


MORNING. 


The Resurrection the Crowning Fact of Christianity. St. John 20. 
Rey. Herbert Welch, D.D., Pastor of the Chester Hill Methodist Episco- 
pal Church, Mount Vernon, N. Y. 
Sanctification in the Truth. St. John 17 : 17-19. 
Rey. D. W. Faunce, D.D., Providence, R. I. 
AFTERNOON. 
Friendship with Jesus Through Obedience to His Commands. St. John 
15:14, 15. 
Rev. John D. Pickles, Ph. D., Pastor of St. John’s Methodist Episcopal 
Church, Boston, Mass. 
The Author of the Fourth Gospel. 
Professor Clark S. Beardslee, D.D., Hartford Theological Seminary, 
Hartford, Conn. 
EVENING. 
Jesus and Simon Peter at the Sea of Tiberias.—‘‘ Feed my Sheep.” St. 
John 21. 
Rev. Galusha Anderson, S.T.D., LL.D., Newton Centre, Mass. 
The Commandment of God and Life Everlasting. St. John 12:49, 50. 
Rey. Stewart Means, D.D., Rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church, New 
Haven, Conn. 





INDEX TO AUTHORS. 


(The A. B. degree is indicated by the date after name of college; the B. D, degree by date after name 
of seminary, Dates in brackets after names of college or seminary indicate period of study without degree. 
Dates after names of cities, towns and counties indicate pastorates or rectorates.) 


Epwarp AssotT, D. D., 6. Farmington, Me.; Univ. of City of New York, 
1860; Andover Theol. Sem. (1860-2); Agent of the U. S. Sanitary Commission, 
Washington, D. C., and with the Army of the Potomac, 1862, 1863; Founder and 
first Pastor of Stearns Chapel (now Pilgrim) Cong. Church, Cambridge, Mass., 
1865-9; Associate Editor of ‘‘ The Congregationalist,” 1869-78; Editor and Joint 
Proprietor of ‘‘ The Literary World”, 1877-88, and Editor of same, 1895-1903; Min- 
ister of St. James’s Episcopal Church, Cambridge, since 1878, and Rector since Dec., 
1879; Chaplain of the Mass. Senate, 1872-3. Author: A Paragraph History of 
the U. S., 1875; A Paragraph History of the American Revolution, 1876; Revolu- 
tionary Times, 1876; History of Cambridge (in Drake’s Hist. of Middlesex Co., 
Vol. 1), 1880; The Long Look Books (Juvenile, 3 vols.), 1877-80; Memoir of 
Jacob Abbott (Memorial Edition of The Young Christian, 1882); Phillips Brooks, 
1g00 ; numerous monographs, sermons, Xc. 


James CuurcH ALvorp, J. Greenfield, Mass. ; Williams, 1885; Andover, 1888; 
Hamilton, Mass., 1888-93; Woonsocket, R. I., 1893—. Contributed articles in the 
‘* Congregationalist” ; stories in the ‘‘Wellspring”, &c. 


FREDERICK LINCOLN ANDERSON, A. M., D. D., 4. St. Louis, Mo.; old Univ. 
ot Chicago, 1882, and A. M. (in course), 1885; Baptist Union Theol. Sem., 1888 ; 
Asst. Prof. of Latin, old Univ. of Chicago, 1882-5 ; Second Baptist Church, Roch- 
ester, N. Y., 1888-1900 ; Prof. of N. T. Interpretation, Newton Theol. Inst’n, 1900— ; 
studied in the University of Berlin, 1904-5. Contributed articles for Reviews; 
occasional addresses. 


GALUSHA ANDERSON, A. M., S. T. D., LL. D., 5. Clarendon, N. Y.; Univ. of 
Rochester, 1854, and A. M. (in course), 1857; Rochester Theol. Sem., (1854-6) ; 
Janesville, Wis., 1856-8; St. Louis, Mo., 1858-66; Prof. of Sacred Rhetoric, Church 
Polity and Pastoral Duties, Newton Theol. Inst’n, 1866-73; Brooklyn, N. Y., 
1873-6; Chicago, Ill., 1876-8; Pres. of old Univ. of Chicago, 1878-85 ; Salem, Mass., 
1885; Pres. of Denison Univ., 1887-90; Prof. of Homiletics, Church Polity and 
Pastoral Duties, Baptist Union Theol. Sem., 1890-2; Prof. and Head of the Dept. 
of Homiletics, the Univ. of Chicago, 1892-1904. Retired from the active duties of 
his chair in January, 1904. Author: Notes on Church Polity, 1867; Notes on 
Homiletics, 1869; Ancient Sermons for Modern Times (translated from the Greek), 
1904; various Articles for Reviews. 


ALFRED WILLIAMS ANTHONY, D. D., 6. Providence, R. I.; Brown, 1883; 
Cobb Div. Sch., 1885; studied at Univ. of Berlin, 1888-90; Bangor, Me., 1885-8; 
Prof. of N. T. Exegesis and Criticism, Cobb Div. Sch. (elected, 1887), 18go—. 
Author: An Introduction to the Life of Jesus, 1896; The Method of Jesus, 1899. 
Editor: Preachers and Preaching, 1900; New Wine Skins : Present Day Problems, 
Igo1, &c. 

493 







494 THE GOSPEL OF ST.JOHN. 


RospertT ARCHIBALD AsHworTH, M. A., 4. Glasgow, Scotland; Columbia, 
1892, and M. A. (in course), 1893; Union Theol. Sem., 1896; Minerva, N. Y., — 
1896-8 ; Bridgeton, N. J., 1898-1900; Meriden, Conn., 1900—. Contributed articles 
for various literary and religious periodicals. 


CLARK SMITH BEARDSLEE, D. D., 6. Coventry, N. Y.; Amherst, 1876; Hart- 
ford, 1879; Teacher of Hebrew, Hartford Theol. Sem., 1879-81 ; studied at Univ. of 
Berlin, 1881; Le Mars, Iowa, 1882-5; Prescott, Ariz., 1885-6; West Springfield, 
Mass., 1886-8; Prof. of Biblical Dogmatics and Ethics, Hartford, 1888—. Author: 
Christ’s Estimate of Himself (a pamphlet), 1899; Teacher—Training with the 
Master Teacher, 1903; Jesus the King of Truth, 1904. ; 

WILLIAM COLEMAN BirtinG, M. A., D. D., 6. Hanover County, Va.; Rich- 
mond, 1877, and M. A.; Crozer, 1880; Luray, Va., 1881-3; New York, Jan. 1, 
1884—. Author: Earthly Blooms from Heavenly Stems, 1900; Foundation 
Truths—Bible Study Union Lessons, 1902 ; numerous articles for magazines, &c. 

Epwin Atonzo BLAkE, Ph. D., D. D., 4.’ Pittsfield, N. H.; Wesleyan, 1872; a 
Univ. of City of N. Y., 1896, 1897; Ph. D., 1897; Guilford, Conn., 1872; Ken- ’ 
sington, Conn., 1873, 1874; Bridgeport, Conn., 1875; Babylon, N. Y., 1876-8; New 
York, 1879-81; Port Chester, N. Y., 1882-4; Bridgeport, Conn., 1885-7; Brook- 
lyn, N. Y., 1888-91; Patchogue, N. Y., 1892-3; Brooklyn, N. Y., 1894-7 ; Hartford, . 
Conn., 1898-1901; Christ Church, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1902; Boston, 1903—. 

Amory Howe Braprorp, D. D., 5. Granby, N. Y.; Hamilton, 1867; Andover, 

1870; studied at Oxford Univ., 1884; first Pastor of First Cong. Church, Mont- 
clair, N. J., 1870—: Moderator of National Congregational Council, 1901-4; 
Pres. Am. Miss. Asso., 1904. Author: Spirit and Life, 1888; Old Wine: New 
Bottles, 1892; The Pilgrim in Old England, 1893; Heredity and Christian Prob- 
lems, 1895; The Sistine Madonna: A Meditation, 1897; The Growing Revelation, 
1897: The Art of Living Alone, 1899; The Spiritual Teaching of the Brownings, 
1900; The Return to Christ, 1900; The Age of Faith, 1902; Messages from the 
Masters, 1903; The Ascent of the Soul, 1903, &c. 

EverRETT DouGuty Burr, D. D., 6. Nyack on the Hudson, N. Y.; Brown, 

1884; Crozer, 1887; Chicago, 1887-91; Ruggles St., Boston, 1891-1900; Newton 
Centre, Mass., 1900—. Author: (Pamphlets) The Church: Its Present Problems, 
1889 ; Social Salvation, 1899; also various articles. 

Amz1 CLARENCE Dixon, D. D., 5. Shelby, N. C.; Wake Forest, N. C., 1875; 
Southern Bapt. Theol. Sem. (1876); Mt. Olive and Bear Marsh Churches, N. C., 
1876-8 ; Chapel Hill, N. C., 1878-81; Asheville, N. C., 1881-4; Baltimore, Md., 
1884-91; Brooklyn, N. Y., 1891-1901; Boston, Mass., 1901—. Author: Heaven 
on Earth; Milk and Meat; Lights and Shadows of American Life; The Holy Spirit 
in Life and Service; Present Day Life and Religion; The Christian Science 
Delusion: besides about 300 published sermons and tracts. 

GEORGE Peck EcKMAN, A. M., Ph. D., D. D., &. Stoddardsville, fo ; Wes- 
leyan, 1884, and A. M., 1893; Drew, 1886; Univ. of City of N. Y., A. M. (in 
course), 1894; Ph. D., 1897 ; Metuchen, N.J., 1886-7; South Orange, N. i -, 1888-90 ; 
Orange, N. J., 1891-3; Morristown, N. J., 1894-6; New York, 1897—. Contributed 
various articles for periodicals. 

DANIEL WORCESTER Faunce, D. D., 4. Plymouth, Mass.; Amherst, 1850; 
Newton, 1853; Worcester, 1854-60; Malden, 1860-6; Concord, N. H., 1866-75; 
Lynn, Mass., 1875-81; Washington, D. C., 1881-9; West Newton, Mass., 1889-94 ; 
Pawtucket, R. ile abo: 9. Author: ce Christian in the World (Fletcher Prize, 


INDEX TO AUTHORS. 495 


Dartmouth College), 1875,; A Young Man’s Difficulties with his Bible, 1877; The 
Christian Experience, 1880; Resurrection in Nature and in Revelation, 1884; Prayer 
asa Theory and a Fact (Fletcher Prize), 1885 ; Hours with a Sceptic, 1893 ; Inspir- 
ation Considered as a Trend, 1897; Shall We Believe in a Divine Providence?, 
1899; Advent and Ascension, 1902. 


Henry THATCHER Fowler, Ph.D., 6. Fishkill, N. Y.; Yale, 1890; Ph. D., 
1896; Yale, 1896-1; teacher in Norwich Free Academy, 1891-2; General Secre- 
tary Yale Univ. Y. M. C. A., and student Yale Div. Sch., 1892-4; Yale, 1894-5 ; 
Assistant in Biblical Literature, Yale, 1895-6; Prof. of Philosophy in Knox College, 
1896-1901; Prof. of Biblical Literature and History, Brown, 1901—. Author: 
The Books of the Bible with Relation to their Place in History, 1904 ; The Prophets 
as Statesmen and Preachers, 1905. 


FRANK JuDson Goopwin, 4. Rye, N. Y.; Amherst, 1884; Union, 1888; Glen 
Ridge, N. J., 1888-99; Pawtucket, R. I., 1899—. Author: A Harmony of the 
Life of St. Paul, 1895. Avrfzcles; The Influence of St. Paul’s Rabbinical Education 
on his Spiritual Life (S.S. Times, Aug. 1, 1896); The Rabbinical Cast in St. 
Paul’s Theology (S. S. Times, Aug. 22, 1896); The Place of Miracle in the Modern 
Christian’s Faith (Homiletic Review, Oct., 1898) ; The Biblical Doctrine of Divine 
Justice (Homiletic Review, Jan., 1904). 


SAMUEL Hart, A.M., D.D., D. C.L., 4. Saybrook, Conn.; Trinity, 1866, 
and A. M. (in course), 1869; Tutor in Greek, Trinity, 1868-70; Asst. Prof. (1870-3), 
and Prof. (1873-83) of Mathematics, Trinity; Prof. of Latin, Trinity, 1883-99 ; Prof. 
of Doctrinal Theology and of the Prayer Book, and Vice-Dean, Berkeley Div. Sch., 
1899—; Registrar of the Diocese of Conn., 1874—; Custodian of the Standard Book 
of Common Prayer, 1886—; Secretary of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal 
Church, 1892—. dztor: Satires of Juvenal, 1873; Satires of Persius, 1875; 
Scipio’s Dream, with Notes; Bishop Seabury’s Communion-Office, with Notes, 
1874; Manuals for Confirmation (1895), and Communion (1895), and Family 
Prayers (1902). Author; Monographs, Discourses, and Addresses on Connecticut 
History and American Church History. 


DorEmMus Army Hayes, Ph. D., S.T. D., LL. D., &. Russelville, Ohio; Ohio 
Wesleyan, 1884; Boston Univ. Sch of Theol., 1887, and S. T. D. (in course) 1901 ; 
Boston Univ.,1885-7 ; Ph. D., 1887; San Leandro, Cal., and San Lorenzo, 1887-8; 
Prof. of Greek Lang. and Lit., Univ. of the Pacific, 1888-91 ; studied in Berlin and 
Leipzig as Fellow of Boston Univ., 1891-2; Napa, Cal., 1892-5; Prof. of Bibl. 
Theol., Iliff Sch. of Theol., Denver, Col., 1895-6 ; Prof. of the English Bible, Garrett 
Bibl. Inst., 1896-1901; Prof. of N. T. Exegesis, 1901—. Author: Monograph on 
The Book of Acts (in Iliff School Studies) ; article on The Revival: Its Power and 
Its Perils (in Church Congress Series); articles in Biblical World and Denomi- 
national Papers. 


FREDERIC DAN HuNTINGTON, S. T. D., D. C. L., LL. D., &. Hadley, Mass., 
May 28, 1819; son of Rev. Dan Huntington of Hadley, who was first a Cong., then 
a Unit. minister; d. at Hadley, July 11, 1904. Prepared for college at Hopkins 
Academy, Hadley; Amherst, 1839; Harvard Div. Sch., 1842; South Cong. Church 
(Unit.), Boston, 1842-55 ; Chaplain of the Mass. Legislature, 1843; First Plummer 
Professor of Christian Morals, Harvard College, 1855-60. Confirmed in the Epis- 
copal Church, March 25, 1860; ordained Deacon, September 12, 1860, and Priest, 
March 19, 1861; First Rector of Emmanuel Church, Boston, 1861-9; First Bishop of 
Central New York, (Consecrated, April 8, 1869), 1869-1904. Editor in turn of The 





496 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Christian Register; The Monthly Religious Magazine; The Church Monthly; 
The Gospel Messenger. Author: Sermons for the People; Christian Believing 
and Living; Divine Aspects of Human Society ; Helps toa Holy Lent; New Helps 
toa Holy Lent; The Fitness of Christianity to Man (Bohlen Lectures) ; Lectures 
on Preaching; A Pastoral Supplication; An Old Man’s Old Testament Petitions ; 
Personal Christian Life in the Ministry; The High Calling ; The Gospel and the 
People; Christ in the Christian Year (two vols.) ; Gospel and Judgment; Good 
Talking a Fine Art; The Golden Rule Applied to Social Life; Christ and the 
World; Forty Days with the Master; Separate Poems, &c.; Editor of two Collec- 
tions of Poems :— ‘‘ Lyra.Domestica”’, and ‘‘ Elim ”. 


WILLIAM REED HunTINGTON, D. D., D. C. L., L. H. D., 5. Lowell,. Mass. 5 
Harvard, 1859; studied Divinity under Rev. F. D. Huntington, Rector of Em- 
manuel Church; Curate of Emmanuel Church, Boston, 1861-2; All Saints, 
Worcester, 1862-83; Grace, New York, 1883—. Author: The Church Idea, 1870; 
Conditional Immortality, 1878; The Peace of the Church, 1891; The Causes of the 
Soul, 1891; A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer, 1893; The Spiritual 
House, 1895; A National Church, 1897; Psyche, A Study of the Soul, 1899 ; Sonnets 
anda Dream, 1899, &c.; various pamphlets and sermons. 


MELANCTHON WILLIAMS JAcosBus, D. D., 4. Allegheny City, Penn.; Prince- 
ton, 1877; Princeton Theol. Sem., 1881; student at Géttingen and Berlin, 1881-4; 
Pastor of Presbyterian Church, Oxford, Penn., 1884-91; Prof. of N. T. Exegesis 
and Criticism, Hartford Theol. Sem., 1891—; Dean of the Faculty, 1903—; Acting 
Pastor First Cong. Church, 1899-1900. Author: A Problem in New Testament 
Criticism (Lectures at Princeton Theoi. Sem. on the Stone Foundation, 1897-8); 
various articles for Reviews, &c. Contributing Editor in charge of the N. T. Dept. 
of the New International Encyclopaedia ; Editor in Chief of the forthcoming Stand- 
ard Bible Dictionary. 


THomAs AvuGustTus JAGGAR, D. D., 4. New York, N. Y.; educated in New 
York; prepared for ministry by private tutors and course at General Theol. Sem. 
Rectorates: Trinity, Bergen Point, N. J., 1862-4; Anthon Memorial, New York, 
1864-9; St. John’s, Yonkers, 1869-70; Holy Trinity, Philadelphia (in succession to 
Phillips Brooks), 1870-5. Consecrated First Bishop of Southern Ohio, 1875 ; Retired 
from jurisdiction, Oct., 1904; preacher at St. Paul’s, Boston, 1904—. Author: 
The Man of the Ages (a volume of Sermons), 1898; The Personality of Truth 
(Bohlen Lectures for 1900); Papers on The Pulpit and Modern Scepticism, The 
Ministry of Phillips Brooks, Xc.; various addresses. 


Henry MeLvit_e Kino, A. M., D. D., d. Oxford, Me.; Bowdoin, 1859, and 
A. M. (in course , 1862; Newton, 1862; Instructor in Hebrew at Newton Theol. 
Inst’n, 1862-3; Dudley Street, Boston, 1863-82; Emmanuel, Albany, N. :Y., 1882- 
g1; First, Providence, 1891—. Author: Early Baptists Defended, 1880; Mary’s 
Alabaster Box, 1883; Our Gospels, 1895; A Summer Visit of Three Rhode Islanders 
to the Mass. Bay, in 1651, (1896); The Mother Church, 1896; The Baptism of 
Roger Williams, 1897; The Messiah in the Psalms, 1899; Why We Believe the 
Bible, 1902; Religious Liberty, 1903, Xc. 


Henry CLay Masie, D. D., 4. Belvidere, Ill.; old Univ. of Chicago, 1868; 
Bapt. Union Theol. Sem., 1875; Rockford, LIl., 1869-73; Oak Park, Ill., 1873-5; 
Brookline, Mass., 1876-9; Indianapolis, Ind., 1879-83; Belvidere, Ill., 1883-5; 
St. Paul, Minn., 1885-8; Minneapolis, Minn., 1888-90; tour of Asiatic Missions 
of the Am. Bapt. Miss. Union, 1890; Cor. Sec. of the Am. Bapt. Miss. Union, 


INDEX TO AUTHORS. 497 


1890—. Has devoted the last fourteen years to a wide touring of the Northern 
States of America, holding numerous conferences on foreign missions. Author’ 
Romanism in Four Chapters, 1890; In Brightest Asia, 1893. 


FRANcIS JoHN McConneELL, Ph. D., 5. Dresden, Ohio; Ohio Wesleyan, 1894 ; 
Boston Univ. Sch. of Theol., 1897; Boston Univ., Ph. D., 1899; West Chelms- 
ford, Mass., 1894-6; Newton Upper Falls, 1897-9; Ipswich, 1899-1902; Harvard 
Street, Cambridge, 1902-3; Brooklyn, N. Y., 1903—. 


DonaLp SAGE Mackay, D. D., 4. Glasgow, Scotland; Univ. of Glasgow, 
1885 ; Seminary of the New College, Edinburgh, 1889; St. Albans, Vt. (Cong.), 
1890-4; Newark, N. J. (Reformed), 1894-9; Collegiate, New York, 1899—. 


ALEXANDER McKenzir, A. M., D. D., 6. New Bedford, Mass.; Harvard, 1859, 
and A. M. (in course), 1862 ; Andover, 1861; Augusta, Me., 1861-7; First, Cong., 
Cambridge, Mass., 1867—. Author: The History of the First Church in Cam- 
bridge, 1873; Cambridge Sermons, 1884; Some Things Abroad, 1887; Christ Him- 
self, 1891; A Door Opened, 1898; The Divine Force in the Life of the World 
(Lowell Institute Lectures), 1898 ; Now, 1899; Getting One’s Bearings, 1903, &c. 


WiLL1AM DouGLas MACKENZIE, D. D., 6. Fauresmith, Orange River Colony, 
South Africa; Univ. of Edinburgh, 1881; Scottish Congregational College, 
Edinburgh, 1882; studied at Géttingen, 1886, and Marburg, 1895; Pastor at 
Montrose, Scotland, 1882-9; Edinburgh, 1889-95; Prof. of Syst. Theol., Chicago 
Theol. Sem., 1895-1903; Preaching Pastor of New England Cong. Church, Chi- 
cago, 1898-1903; Prof. of Syst. Theol. and Pres., Hartford Theol. Sem., 1904—. 
Author: The Ethics of Gambling, 1895; The Revelation of the Christ, 1896; 
Christianity and the Progress of Man, 1897; South Africa, Its History, Heroes 
and Wars, 1900; John Mackenzie, South African Missionary and Statesman, 
1902. 

Stewart Means, A. M.,D.D., 4. Steubenville, Ohio; Kenyon (1869-72); 
A. M., 1881; Union, 1875; Episcopal Theol. Sch., 1876; Bayonne, N. J., 1876-9; 
Middletown, Ohio, 1879-81; Assistant, St. Ann’s, Brooklyn, N. Y., 1882-3; New 
Haven, Conn., 1883—. Azzthor: St. Paul and the Ante-Nicene Church, 1904; 
Essays, Sermons, Translations, &c. 


CHARLES Manty MELDEN, Ph. D., D. D., 3. Salem, Mass.; Boston Univ., 
1880; Boston Univ. Sch. of Theol., 1883; Boston Uniy., Ph. D., 1892; Byfield, 
Mass., 1882-3 ; Lawrence, 1884-6 ; Northampton, 1887-9; Somerville, 1890-3; Brock- 
ton, 1894-7; Pres. of Clark Univ., Atlanta, Ga., 1897-1902 ; Providence, 1903—. 

JAmes Lee Mitcue t, Ph. D., 6. Limerick, Me.; Harvard, 1884; Union, 1887; 
Yale, Ph. D., 1896; Cadillac, Mich., 1887-90; New Haven, Conn., 1890-1901; 
Attleboro, Mass., 1901—. 

HENRY SYLVESTER Nasu, D. D., 5. Newark, O.; Harvard, 1878; Epis. Theol. 
Sch., 1881; Prof. of N. T. Interpretation, Epis. Theol. Sch., 1882—; Rector, 
Chestnut Hill, Newton, Mass., 1887-1902. Author: The Genesis of the Social 
Conscience, 1896; Ethics and Revelation, 1898; History of the Higher Criticism of 
the New Testament, 1900. 

WiLLis PatTERSON ODELL, Ph. D., D. D., &. Laconia, N. H.; Boston Univ., 
1880; A. M. (in course), 1890; Ph. D., 1896; Cliftondale, Mass., 1880-3; Salem, 
1883-6; Malden, 1886-90; Delaware Ave., Buffalo, N. Y., 1890-5; Richmond Ave., 
Buffalo, 1895-8; Calvary, New York, 1898-1904 ; Germantown, Philadelphia, 1904—. 
Author: Ministries of Hope, 1904 ; numerous pamphlets. 


498 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


FREDERIC PALMER, A. M., 4. Boston, Mass.; Harvard, 1869, and A. M. (in 
course), 1872 ; Andover, 1872 ; Private Tutor, 1872-4; Pastor, Revere, Mass. (Cong.), 
1874-8 ; Ordained Deacon in Episcopal Church, 1878; Assistant, Emmanuel Church, 
Boston, 1878-9 ; ordained Priest, 1879 ; Acting Rector, Lonsdale, R.I., 1879; Rector, 
Jenkintown, Penn., 1880-8; Andover, Mass., 1888—; Associate Editor of ‘‘ The 
Church”, 1896-9. Author: Studies in Theologic Definition, 1894; The Drama 
of the Apocalypse, 1903. ; 





Joun Davis Pick Es, Ph. D., 6. St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Can.; Boston 
Univ., 1877 ; Boston Univ. Sch. of Theol., 1873 ; Boston Uniy., Ph. D., 1885; Win- 
throp, Mass., 1877-80 ; Lawrence, 1880-3 ; Melrose, 1883-6; Lynn, 1886-91 ; Worcester, 
1891-5 ; Tremont Street, Boston, 1895-1900 ; Westfield, 1900-03 ; St. John’s, Boston, 
1903—. Author: Pamphlet on Methodism :—Historical, Educational, Doctrinal, 
Missionary, 1902; Sermons to Grand Army Republic on Memorial Sundays, 1904. 


ALBERT HALE Pius, D. D., 4. Gowanda, N. Y.; Brown, 1855; Andover, 
1858; Chelsea, Mass., 1858-72; Roxbury, Boston, 1872—; Member of Prudential 
Committee of A. B. C. F. M., 1882-1903. Author: Numerous articles, addresses, &c. 

Epwin McNEIL PorTeart, D. D., 4. Caswell Co., N. C.; Wake Forest, N. C., 
1881; Southern Bapt. Theol. Sem., 1885; Chapel Hill, N. C., Aug.-Dec., 
1885 ; Instructor in Latin and Greek, Wake Forest, Jan.-June, 1886; Johns Hopkins 
Univ., 1886-8; Lee St., Baltimore, Md. (supply), 1886-8; Calvary, New Haven, 
Conn., 1888-98 ; Memorial, Philadelphia, Penn., 1898-1903 ; Pres. of Furman Univ., 
Greenville, S. C., 1903—. 

RocKWELL Harmon Porter, 6. Glenville, N. Y.; Union College, 1895; 
(Yale, 1895-6; Union, 1896-7), Chicago, 1898; Flushing, L. 1. (Reformed), 1898- 
1900; First (Cong.), Hartford, Conn., 19co—. 

CHARLES AuGusTUS LEwis RIcCHARDs, D. D., 6. Cincinnati, Ohio; Yale, 
1849; Jefferson Medical School, Philadelphia, M. D., 1852; Practised as phy- 
sician, 1852-4; Theol. Sem. of Virginia, 1858; Great Barrington, Mass., 1858-61; 
Church of the Saviour, Philadelphia, 1861-5; Trinity, Columbus, Ohio, 1865-9; 
St. John’s, Providence, 1869-1901; Rector Emeritus, 1901—. Author: Several 
papers before the Church Congress; article on Christian Unity in the Andover 
Review, &c. 

CHARLES WESLEY RISHELL, A. M., Ph. D., 6. Williamsport, Penn.; Witten- 
berg, 1876, and A. M. (in course), 1879; Drew (1874-5); studied at Univ. of Berlin, 
1889-91; Cincinnati, Ohio, 1876-8; Winton Place, 1878-80; Delhi, 1880-3; Avon- 
dale, 1883-6 ; Urbana, 1886-9; Cincinnati, 1891-4 ; Springfield, 1894-5 ; Prof. of His- 
torical Theol., Boston Univ. Sch. of Theol., 1895—; Asst. Dean Boston Univ. Sch. 
of Theol., 1904—. Author; History of the Christian Church, 1891; The Higher 
Criticism, 1893; The Official Recognition of Woman in the Church, 1892; The 
Foundations of the Christian Faith, 1899; The Child as God’s Child, 1904; various 
articles in religious and theological journals. 

FRANK KNIGHT SANDERS, Ph. D., D. D., 4. Batticotta, Jaffna, Ceylon ; Ripon 
(Wis.), 1882; Instructor, Jaffna College, Ceylon, 1882-6; Yale, 1886-9; Ph. D., 
1889; Asst. (1889-91) and Instructor in Semitic Languages, Yale, 1891-2; Asst. 
Prof. (1892-4) and Woolsey Prof. of Bib. Lit., Yale, 1894-1901; Prof. of Bib. Hist. 
and Archeology, and Dean, Yale Div. Sch., 1901-5; First Pres. of Religious Edu- 
cation Association, 1903-4, and Director for Life, 1904—. Author: The Messages 
of the Earlier Prophets, 1898 (with Prof. C. F. Kent); The Messages of the Later 
Prophets, 1899 (with Prof. Kent); Co-Editor (with Prof. Kent) of The Historical 


INDEX TO AUTHORS. 499 


Series for Bible Students (10 vols.), The Messages of the Bible (12 vols.), and of 
The Library of Ancient Inscriptions (10 vols.); Regular Weekly Contributor of 
Senior Bible Class Department to Sunday School Times since 1895. 


AVERY ALBERT SHAW, M.A., 4. Berwick, Nova Scotia, Can.; Acadia College, 
1892, and M. A. (in course), 1895; Rochester Theol. Sem., 1896; Windsor, Nova 
Scotia, 1896-1900; Brookline, Mass., 1900—. Contributed— Christ a Creation or 
the Creator of Christianity? (article in Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1903). 


Joun Batcom Suaw, A. M., D. D., 4. Bellport, N. Y.; Lafayette, 1885, and 
A. M., 1888; Union, 1888; New York, 1888-1904; Chicago, 1904—. Author: 
Four Great Questions, 1897; Soul-Winning, 1902; The Difficult Life, 1903; The 
Work that Wins, 1905; numerous articles in the Independent, Observer, Interior, 
Homiletic Review, &c. 


HENRY CLAy SHELDON, A.M., S. T. D., 6. Martinsburg, N. Y.; Yale, 1867, 
and A.M, 1870; Instructor, Delaware Literary Institute, 1867-8; Boston Univ. 
Sch. of Theol., 1871; studied at Leipzig Univ., 1874-5; St. Johnsbury, Vt. (supply), 
1871-2; Brunswick, Me., 1872-4; Prof. of Church Hist., Boston Univ. Sch. of 
Theol., 1875-95 ; Prof. of Syst. Theol., 1895—; has also taught Bib. Theol. of the N. 
T. for a series of years. Author: History of Christian Doctrine (2 vols.), 1886; 
History of the Christian Church (5 vols.), 1894;. System of Christian Doctrine, 
1903; numerous articles, &c. 


CHARLES FREMONT SITTERLY, Ph. D., S. T. D., 5. Liverpool, N. Y.; Syra- 
cuse, 1883, and Ph. D., 1886; Drew, 1886; student at Oxford, Bonn, Heidelberg, 
Leipzig, Berlin, 1890-2; Chester, N. J., 1886-8; Cranford, 1888-9; Madison, 1889- 
go; Prof. of Bib. Lit. and English Exegesis, Drew, 1892—. Author: Manu- 
scripts of the Greek Testament, 1898; History of the English Bible, 1899; also 
contributions to church Reviews and to American Journal of Theology. 


WILLIAM ARNOLD STEVENS, D. D., LL. D., 6. Granville, Ohio; Denison, 
1862, and A. M., 1865; Rochester Theol. Sem. (1862-3) ; Classical Tutor, Denison, 
1863-5; student of Philology and Theology, Harvard, Leipzig, Berlin, 1865-8; 
Prof. of Greek Lang. and Lit., Denison, 1868-77; Prof. of Bib. Lit. and N. T. 
Exegesis, Rochester, 1877—; Biblical study abroad, chiefly in Egypt and Syria, 
1882-3. Author: Select Orations of Lysias, 1876; Commentary on the Epistles 
to the Thessalonians, 1887; Outline Handbook of the Life of Christ (with Prof. 
Ernest DeWitt Burton), 1892; Harmony of the Gospels for Historical Study (with 
Prof. Burton), 1894; articles in Bibliotheca Sacra, Homiletic Review, Nc. 

GEORGE Marvin Stone, D. D., 6. Strongsville, Ohio; Madison Univ. (now 
Colgate), 1858; Hamilton Theol. Sem. (now Colgate), (1859); Danbury, Conn.., 
1860-7; Winona, Minn., 1867-70; Milwaukee, Wis.. 1870-3; Tarrytown, N. Y., 
1873-9; Hartford, Conn., 1879—. Author: Public Uses of the Bible, 1891; 
numerous articles in periodicals. 

Aucustus Hopkins Strone, D. D., LL. D., 4. Rochester, N. Y.; Yale, 
1857; Rochester, 1859; travelled in Europe and the East and studied at Univ. of 
Berlin, 1859-60; Haverhill, Mass., 1861-5; Cleveland, Ohio, 1865-72; Prof. of Bib. 
Theol. and Pres., Rochester Theol. Sem., 1872—. Author: Systematic Theology 
[7th Edition, 1903], 1886; Philosophy and Religion, 1888; The Great Poets and 
their Theology, 1897; Christ in Creation and Ethical Monism, 1899. 

WILLARD Brown Tuorp, 4. Oxford, N. Y.; Amherst, 1887; in business in 
New York, 1887-8; Yale, 1891; Binghamton, N. Y., 1891-9; Chicago, 1899—. 


500 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Horace WAYLAND TILDEN, A. M., D. D., 6. Chesterville, Me.; served in Union 
Army, 1863-6; Colby, 1872, and A. M. (in course), 1875; Newton, 1875; Augusta, 
Me., 1875-84; Hyde Park, Mass., 1884-9; Des Moines, Iowa, 1889-98 ; Livermore 
Falls, Me., 1899-1903 ; Pierre, S.D., 1904—. Author: Sundry sermons and essays. 


FLoyp WitiiAms Tomkins, S. T. D., 6. New York, N. Y.; Harvard, 1872; 
General Theol. Sem., 1875; Missionary, Pueblo, Col., 1875-7, and Cheyenne, 
Wyoming, 1877-8; Rector, Kenosha, Wis., 1878-80; Minneapolis, Minn., 1880-2; 
Keene, N. H., 1882-4; Asst. in charge Calvary Chapel, New York, N. Y., 
1884-8; Christ Church, Hartford, Conn., 1888-92; St. James, Chicago, IIll., 
1892-5; Grace, Providence, R. I., 1895-9; Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, Penn., 
1899—. Author: The Christian Life, 1897; Following Christ, 1900; My Best 
Friend, 1902; Beacons on Life’s Voyage, 1904. 


James GARDINER VosgE, D. D., 4. Boston, Mass.; Yale, 1851; Andover, 1854; 
Greenfield, Mass., 1854-5 ; travelled in Europe and studied in Berlin, 1855-6; Prof. 
of Rhetoric, Amherst, 1856-65; Dorchester, Mass. (supply), 1865; Beneficent, 
Providence, 1866-1901 ; Pastor Emeritus, 1901—. Author: Congregationalism in 
Rhode Island, 1894; Children’s Day, 1897; articles in Bibliotheca Sacra, and New 
Englander; occasional sermons and addresses. 


HERBERT WELCH, D. D., 5. New York, N. Y.; Wesleyan, 1887; Drew, 1890; 
studied at Oxford, 1902-3; Bedford Station, N. Y., 1890-2; St. Luke’s, New York, 
1892-3; Summerfield, Brooklyn, 1893-8; Middletown, Conn., 1898-1902; Mount 
Vernon, N. Y., 1903-5; Pres. Ohio Wesleyan Univ., 1905—. Edztor: Selections 
from the Writings of John Wesley, 1gor. 


Henry Griccs Weston, D.D., LL.D., 4. Lynn, Mass.; Brown, 1840; 
Newton, (1840-2): Tazewell and Woodford Counties, Ill., 1843-6; Peoria, IIl., 
1846-59; Oliver St. and Madison Ave., New York, 1859-68; Prof. of Practical 
Theology and Pres., Crozer Theol. Sem., 1868—. 4uthor: Matthew, the Gen- 
esis of the New Testament, 1900; besides several brochures. 


WILBERT WEBSTER WHITE, Ph. D., 6. Ashland, Ohio; Wooster, 1881; Xenia, 
1885 ; Instructor in Prep. Dept. Univ. of Wooster, 1881-3; Pastor, Peotone, Ill. 
(U. P.), 1885-7; Yale, 1887-90; Ph. D., 1890; Prof. of Hebrew and O. T. Lit., 
Xenia, 1890-5; Instructor in Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, 1895-6; Special 
Bible Work in India and Great Britain under Y. M. C. A. and College auspices, 
1896-1900; Pres. Bible Teachers Training School, New York, 1900—; Editor of 
‘“The Bible Record”, 1904—. Author: Thirty Studies in the Gospel by John, 
1895; Thirty Studies in the Revelation, 1897; Inductive Studies in the Minor 
Prophets, 1894; Thirty Studies in Jeremiah, 1895; Studies in Old Testament Char- 
acters, 1900; Availing Prayer, 1900; Thirty Studies in the Gospel by Matthew, 
1903; various pamphlets, charts, &c., on Bible Study. 


WILLiAM CALvIN WHITFORD, A. M., d. Brookfield, N. Y.; Colgate, 1886, and 
A.M. (in course), 1890; in business in Brookfield, N. Y., 1886-9; Union, 1892; 
Berlin, N. Y. (Seventh Day Baptist), 1892-3; Prof. of Bib. Languages and Lit. in 
Alfred Univ., 1893—; in Alfred Theol. Sem. (organized, 1901), 1901— ; Contribut- 
ing Editor of Peculiar People, 1894-6; Editor of Helping Hand (S. S. Quarterly, 
Plainfield, N. J.), 1898—. 

BENAIAH LONGLEY WHITMAN, D. D., LL. D., 4. Wilmot, Nova Scotia, Can. ; 
Brown, 1887; Newton, 1890; Portland, Me., 1890-2; Pres. Colby Univ., 1892-5 ; 
Pres. Columbian Univ., 1895-1900; Philadelphia, 1900—. Author: Elements 





INDEX TO AUTHORS. 501 


of Ethics, 1893; Elements of Political Science, 1899; Outlines of Political History, 
1900; numerous articles on Educational and Religious Topics. 

CoRNELIUS WOELFKIN, D. D., 6. New York, N. Y.; educated in New York, 
and at Christian Bibl. Inst., Stanford, N. Y.; Stanford, N. Y., 1885-7; Hacken- 
sack, N. J., 1887-92; Jersey City, 1892-4; Brooklyn, N. -Y., 1894—. Author: 
Chambers of the Soul, rgor. 

NATHAN Eusesius Woop, D. D., 4. Forrestville, N. Y. ; old Univ. of Chicago, 
1872; Bapt. Union Theol. Sem., 1875; Chicago, Ill., 1875-7; Principal of Wayland 
Academy, Wis., 1877-83; Chicago, Ill., 1883-6; Brooklyn, N. Y., 1886-92; Brook- 
line, Mass., 1892-4; First, Boston, 1894-9; Prof. of Theology and Pres., Newton 
Theol. Inst’n, 1899—. Author: History of the First Baptist Church, Boston, 
1899; Editor of Boise’s Notes on the Epistles of Paul, 1896; various articles for 
Reviews, &c. 





INDEX TO TEXTS. 


(References are given by author and page to principal texts in order of chapter and verse. In each 
chapter, if necessary to clearness, sections of more than two verses are indexed first in order of first verse 
of section). 

1. 1-5 (F. L. Anderson, 417; Thorp, 471); 1-18 (Beardslee, 26-9, 398; Nash, 
59; F. L. Anderson, 417-8); 1-51 (White, 22-5) ; 6-13 (F. L. Anderson, 417) ; 10-13 
(Jaggar, 339) ; 14-18 (F. L. Anderson, 417) ; 19-37 (Stevens, 30-41); 29-51 (Dixon, 
42-9; Poteat, 453); 35-51 (Bitting, 463-4) ;—1 (White, 22-3; Beardslee, 26-9; 
Strong, 63, 70; King, 100; McKenzie, 111; Sheldon, 289, 293; Fowler, 306; Jag- 
gar, 339; F. L. Anderson, 415, 435; Mitchell, 450-2); 3 (McKenzie, 112; Sheldon, 
289-90; Beardslee, 399); 4 (King, 104-5; Eckman, 118; Burr, 206; Beardslee, 399; 
F. L. Anderson, 415); 5 (Nash, 59); 6 (Stevens, 30-2, 38-41); 6, 7 (Thorp, 471); 
7 (White, 10-15; Burr, 206-7; F. L. Anderson, 415) ; 9 (Sheldon, 287, 290; Beards- 
lee, 399); 11 (Mabie, 224); 12 (Tomkins, 50-8; Plumb, 77; Sheldon, 292; Pickles, 
304; F. L. Anderson, 415); 13 (Tomkins, 58; Nash, 60; King, 104); 14 (White, 
22-3; Beardslee, 26-9; Nash, 59-62; Strong, 63-4; Abbott, 74; King, 105; McKen- 
zie, 110; Mabie, 233; Sheldon, 288, 290, 292; Jaggar, 337, 343; F. L. Anderson, 
414); 15 (Stevens, 35); 17 (Sheldon, 287); 18 (White, 22-3; Sheldon, 287-8); 26 
(Stevens, 38); 29 (Stevens, 35-6; Dixon, 42, 46; Abbott, 74; Plumb, 86; McKen- 
zie, 111; A. A. Shaw, 239; Sheldon, 287; Faunce, 321; Thorp, 471); 30 (Sheldon, 
290); 31 (Stevens, 32-4); 33 (Stevens, 36-7); 34 (Stevens, 34-5; Dixon, 42); 37 
(Dixon, 42-4); 39 (Dixon, 46); 41 (Dixon, 44-7); 42 (Dixon, 47-8); 43 (White, 
20-1, 24-5; Dixon, 45); 45 (White, 23-4; Dixon, 45); 46 (White, 23-5 ; Dixon, 45); 
47 (Dixon, 48); 48 (White, 24); 49 (White, 17, 24; Dixon, 48; Pickles, 305); 51 
(Dixon, 48-9). 

2. I-11 (Strong, 63-70; McKenzie, 112, 113; G. Anderson, 367; Beardslee, 
399) ;—4 (Strong, 65; Weston, 364); 5 (White, 20) : 6 (McKenzie, 108) ; 7 (Strong, 
65); 11 (Strong, 63-70; Abbott, 72; Rishell, 201; F. L. Anderson, 414); 19 (A. A. 
Shaw, 239) ; 19-21 (Welch, 349); 23 (Rishell, 201; Mackenzie, 383). 

3+ I-15 (Abbott, 71-5; McKenzie, 113; F. L. Anderson, 419 20); 1-16 (Mac- 
kenzie, 382-9; Whitford, 455-7); 14-21 (Plumb, 76-86; Mackenzie, 384); 18-20 
(Plumb, 80) ;—1 (Beardslee, 437); 2 (Rishell, 201; Welch, 351); 3 (Nash, 60; 
Abbott, 72-3; McKenzie, 111, 113-4; Whitford, 455-6) ; 4 (Abbott, 73); 5 (Abbott, 
73-5; King, 104; F. L. Anderson, 419-20; Whitford, 456); 13 (Sheldon, 290); 14 
(King, 105; A. A. Shaw, 236, 239; Bitting, 465); 15 (Abbott, 71; Plumb, 76-7); 
16 (Tomkins, 50; Abbott, 71; Plumb, 79; McKenzie, 111: A. A. Shaw, 240; 
Sheldon, 290, 294; Ashworth, 296; Pickles, 305; Jaggar, 343; Whitford, 457) ; 
19 (White, 19; Melden, 126-7); 31, 32 (Sheldon, 290-1); 35 (Sheldon, 292); 36 
(Plumb, 77,86). 

4. 1-42 (Goodwin, 87-92; McKenzie, 114-5; Vose, 458-62; Bitting, 464-5) ; 
5-26 (Mackenzie, 382-3, 386-9); 7-15 (F. L. Anderson, 421); 16-42 (F. L. Anderson, 
421); 43-54 (F. L. Anderson, 421) ;—6 (McKenzie, 109-10) ; 7 (White, 18; Beards- 
lee, 438); 14 (McKenzie, 110; Sheldon, 290); 19 (Rishell, 201); 23 (Goodwin, 
go); 24 (King, 105; Burr, 215; Thorp, 471); 26 (White, 17); 32 (Means, 252); 
34 (Odell, 93-8; J. B. Shaw, 130-1; Jaggar, 342; Preface, ix) ; 35 (Goodwin, 88-9) ; 
41 (Rishell, 200); 42 (W. R. Huntington, 191); 46 (White, 18). 


502 


INDEX TO TEXTS. 503 


5. 1-16 (Jacobus, 164); 1-30 (Eckman, 118-23; Melden, 124-9); 1-47 (Beards- 
lee, 401); 21-23 (Sheldon, 292) ;—4 (Eckman, 119); 6 (Eckman, 121-2; Melden, 
126, 128); 16 (McKenzie, 115); 17 (Eckman, 120; Melden, 125; Jaggar, 338); 18 
(Eckman, 120-1; Melden, 124-5; A. A. Shaw, 240); 19, 20 (Beardslee, 400); 20 
(Rishell, 202; Sheldon, 290, 292); 21 (Eckman, 121; Melden, 126); 22 (Eckman, 
122; Melden, 126); 23 (Melden, 126); 24 (Melden, 126); 26 (Eckman, 118; 
Sheldon, 292); 26, 27 (Jaggar, 339); 27 (Sheldon, 288); 28, 29 (Eckman, 122-3; 
Melden, 127); 30 (J. B. Shaw, 130-5); 31 (Melden, 128); 36 (White, 15-17; Mel- 
den, 128; Rishell, 200; Burr, 207); 37 (Melden, 128; Burr, 207); 39 (White, 11; 
Melden, 128; Burr, 207-8); 40 (White, 19; Burr, 207); 42 (White, 19); 46 (Mel- 
den, 128). 

6. 1-14 (Beardslee, 399); 1-71 (Nash, 155-6); 30-59 (Woelfkin, 145-52) ;— 
9 (McKenzie, 115-6); 26 (Rishell, 202); 27 (Woelfkin, 149; Sheldon, 287-8); 
29 (Plumb, 77; Wood, 136-44; Woelfkin, 149); 33 (Sheldon, 290; Beardslee, 400) ; 
35 (Woelfkin, 145, 149); 38 (J. B. Shaw, 130; Woelfkin, 151); 40 (Jaggar, 338); 
46 (Sheldon, 290); 47 (Wood, 142-3); 48 (Sheldon, 292); 51 (Woelfkin, 150; 
Jaggar, 340; Beardslee, 438); 52 (Jaggar, 337); 53 (A. A. Shaw, 239); 56 (Jaggar, 
337); 56, 57 (Woelfkin, 151); 57 (Sheldon, 292); 60 (Nash, 156); 62 (Sheldon, 
288, 290); 63 (McKenzie, 117; Woelfkin, 150; Burr, 215; Sheldon, 287); 66 
(Rishell, 201); 67 (Nash, 156); 68 (Sheldon, 287) ; 68-69 (Nash, 153-60). 


Chapters 7-10 (Jacobus, 161-6). 


7- 37-39 (Bradford, 187-8) ;—17 (Wood, 136; Whitman,.173 ; McConnell, 177- 
86; Mackay, 222) ; 18 (Sheldon, 288) ; 31 (Rishell, 202); 37 (Jacobus, 165; Jaggar, 
338; Beardslee, 439); 37, 38 (Beardslee, 399); 46 (Rishell, 201); 50-52 (Pickles, 
305 )- 

8. 31-36 (Burr, 205-17) ;—12 (White, 21; Sheldon, 287; Faunce, 325; Jaggar, 
337; Beardslee, 399; Poteat, 454); 28 (A. A. Shaw, 236, 239); 29 (Odell, 95; J. B. 
Shaw, 130-1; W. R. Huntington, 189-96; Sheldon, 288-9, 292); 30 (Rishell, 201) ; 
31, 32 (Beardslee, 439); 32 (Jaggar, 338); 36 (Burr, 208); 38 (Whitman, 173; 
Sheldon, 292); 42 (Whitman, 173; Jaggar, 333); 44 (Whitman, 173); 46 (Tom- 
kins, 57; W. R. Huntington, 189-96); 47 (Whitman, 173); 56 (Jaggar, 343); 58 
(Sheldon, 290-1; Jaggar, 338). 

9. 1-41 (Bitting, 465) ;—3 (Rishell, 202) ; 4 (Rishell, 200; Jaggar, 343) ; 7 (Mc- 
Kenzie, 116); 11 (White, 19); 25-33 (Beardslee, 440); 34 (F. L. Anderson, 427); 
35-38 (Wood, 142); 39 (Mabie, 226). 

10. 8,9 (Pickles, 301-2); 10 (Burr, 205); 11 (McKenzie, 116; A. A. Shaw, 
239, 242; Beardslee, 440); 14 (Sheldon, 294); 14, 15 (Sheldon, 292); 16 (Fowler, 
306) ; 17, 18 (Stone, 327); 18 (A. A. Shaw, 240; Means, 252); 27 (Weston, 361); 
28 (Plumb, 76-7; Sheldon, 294); 30 (Sheldon, 292-3; Fowler, 3c6); 32 (Rishell, 
200) ; 36 (Faunce, 319); 37, 38 (Rishell, 199-201 ; Sheldon, 292) ; 38 (Fowler, 308-9). 

11. 1-46 (Mackay, 218-23) —3 (Mackay, 220); 4 (Rishell, 202); 25 (Eckman, 
118, 123; Melden, 127; Jaggar, 338; Beardslee, 440) ; 35 (Mackay, 220) ; 36 (Mackay, 
221); 43 (Mackay, 220-1); 52 (Fowler, 307); 57 (Means, 252). 

12. 1-9 (Mackay, 218-23); 20-32. (Mabie. 224-35) ;—7 (Mackay, 220); 12-19 
(Beardslee, 441); 23 (Mabie, 224; A. A. Shaw, 237); 24 (Jacobus, 165; Mabie, 
224; A. A. Shaw, 237; Blake, 261; Jaggar, 340); 24, 25 (Bitting, 465); 25 (Blake, 
261) ; 25, 26 (Mabie, 231); 27 (Mabie, 233; A. A. Shaw, 237); 27, 28 (Jaggar, 341); 
28 (Mabie, 225, 233; F. L. Anderson, 434); 30 (Mabie, 233); 31 (Mabie, 225-35; 
A. A. Shaw, 243); 31, 32 (Jacobus, 165); 32 (McKenzie, 116; Mabie, 225; A. A. 





504 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 


Shaw, 236-48; Hart, 268-9; Jaggar, 341; F. L. Anderson, 434; Bitting, 465); 
36 (White, 20); 37 (White, 15; Rishell, 201); 37-40 (Rishell, 203); 45 (Sheldon, 
288) ; 46 (Jaggar, 338); 49, 50 (Means, 249-56). 

13. 1-17 (Blake, 257-67); 31-38 (Beardslee, 441); 33-35 (Fowler, 309) ;—1 
(Blake, 257, 260; Sheldon, 294; F. L. Anderson, 415); 3 (Blake, 259) ; 5 (McKenzie, 
116); 10 (Tomkins, 58); 15 (Blake, 258, 265); 16 (Blake, 265); 17 (Mackay, 222) ; 
21 (Anthony, 281) ; 23 (McKenzie, 107) ; 31-32 (Hart, 268-74) ; 33 (Anthony, 281) ; 
34 (Mackay, 219; Means, 252; Blake, 265-6) ; 34-35 (Potter, 275-9; Preface, viii-ix) ; 
36 (Potter, 275; Stone, 326); 38 (Anthony, 281). 

14. 1-3 (Welch, 351); 6-11 ‘Sheldon, 287-94); 7-10 (Anthony, 282); 9-11 
(Anthony, 283-4); 16-18 (Anthony, 282-3); 19-23 (Anthony, 283); 21-26 (Ash- 
worth, 295-300) ;—1 (Anthony, 282); 2 (King, 106; Anthony, 282-3); 3 (Anthony, 
282); 5 (Anthony, 284); 6 (Burr, 206, 208; Faunce, 320; Jaggar, 338); 8 (Anthony, 
284); 9 (Stone, 329); 10 (Sheldon, 292); 10, 11 (Fowler, 306, 309); 11 (Whitman, 
175; Rishell, 200; Welch, 351); 12 (Anthony, 283); 15 (King, 106; Means, 252); 
16, 17 (Beardslee, 441-2); 20 (Anthony, 284; Sheldon, 292); 21 (Means, 252; 
Pickles, 302-3); 23 (Pickles, 302; G. Anderson, 378); 26 (Anthony, 284); 30 
(W. R. Huntington, 194; Mabie, 229); 31 (Means, 253). 

15. 1 (Mackay, 221-2); 3 (Sheldon, 287); 4 (Anthony, 283); 5 (King, 105-6; 
Burr, 214; Fowler, 306); 9 (Sheldon, 288) ; 10 (Means, 253; Pickles, 303; Fowler, 
306, 308); 12 (Means, 253); 14 (White, 20; Mackay, 222); 14, 15 (Pickles, 301-5); 
15 (Mackay, 218, 222-3); 16 (Beardslee, 400); 22-24 (Plumb, 77-8, 81) ; 24 (Rishell, 
201); 26 (Anthony, 284). 

16. 7-15 (Sheldon, 287); 8-11 (Anthony, 284); 12-14 (Jaggar, 337);—7 
(Anthony, 282; Jaggar, 339); 9 (Jaggar, 339); 11 (Mabie, 229) ; 13 (Anthony, 284); 
15 (Sheldon, 292); 21 (Jaggar, 340) ; 33 (Nash, 312; Welch, 352). 

17. 1-5 (Faunce, 318); 1-26 (Fowler, 306-10; Nash, 311-16); 4-8 (Nash, 313); 
6-19 (Faunce, 318); 12-18 (Nash, 314); 17-19 (Faunce, 317-25) ; 20-26 (Faunce, 318) ; 
21-23 (Richards, 478-80) ;—1 (A. A. Shaw, 237; Nash, 312); 1, 2 (Jaggar, 339); 2 
(Sheldon, 288) ; 3 (Plumb, 76; McKenzie, 117; Whitman, 176; Means, 256; Sheldon, 
287; Nash, 312; Jaggar, 339); 4 (Sheldon, 288: Faunce, 318); 5 (Hart, 273; Shel- 
don, 290-1; Fowler, 307); 6 (Faunce, 319); 9-11 (Nash, 314); 11 (Fowler, 307-8; 
Faunce, 318; Jaggar, 338); 12 (Rishell, 203; Fowler, 307-8); 17 (Plumb, 85; Til- 
den, 468-70) ; 18 (Jaggar, 342); 19 (Nash, 314-5); 20 (Jaggar, 342); 20, 21 (Fowler, 
308); 21 (King, 106; Jaggar, 338); 22 (Fowler, 308-9); 22, 23, (Nash, 315); 23 
(Fowler, 309; Jaggar, 342); 24 (Fowler, 309); 25, 26 (Jaggar, 338); 26 (Nash, 
315-6). 

18. 28-40 (Beardslee, 443) ;—11 (Stone, 326-31) ; 37 (Jacobus, 165-6; Sheldon, 
287). 

19. 27 (Abbott, 72; McKenzie, 108-9,; 28 (Jaggar, 342); 30 (A. A. Shaw, 
2393 Jaggar, 332-43); 39 (Pickles, 305). 

20. 1-31 (Welch, 344-55);—21 (Beardslee, 400; Preface, ix); 22 (Beardslee, 
399); 28 (White, 17, 23, 25; Strong, 64; King, 104 ; Wood, 144; Pickles, 302 ; Welch, 
352; G. Anderson, 369; F. L. Anderson, 435); 31 (White, 10-12, 15, 17, 20, 22-3; 
Plumb, 86; King, 99-104; Rishell, 199; Welch, 345; G. Anderson, 366, 368-9; 
Palmer, 390-6; Beardslee, 397-8; F. L. Anderson, 414; Bitting, 463; Preface, 
vii-ix). 

21. 1-14 (G. Anderson, 368-71); 1-25 (Weston, 356-65; F. L. Anderson, 
435) 3—1 (G. Anderson, 366) ; 6 (Weston, 356); 8 (McKenzie, 108); 11 (McKenzie, 
108); 15 (McKenzie, 117); 15-17 (Weston, 357-64; G. Anderson, 366-79; Beards- 
lee, 443; Alvord, 476-7); 18-19 (G. Anderson, 378); 20 (G. Anderson, 369); 21 


INDEX TO TEXTS. 505 


(Weston, 364; G. Anderson, 379); 22 (Weston, 364; G. Anderson, 379); 23 
(Strong, 64; G. Anderson, 367); 24 (McKenzie, 109; G. Anderson, 369); 25 
(Weston, 365; G. Anderson, 366). 

Authorship. White, 10-13, 17; Stevens, 36; Tomkins, 52; Strong, 64; King, 
100-3 ; McKenzie, 107-111, 115, 117; Eckman, 118; Nash, 153-4, 164; G. Anderson, 
368-9 ; Palmer, 390-6; Beardslee, 397-402; Richards, 478; Riggs, (Preface) viii-x. 

Characteristics. White, 10-3, 17-8, 20-3; Beardslee, 26-9, 397-402; Tomkins, 
50; Nash, 59, 153-4, 311; Strong, 63-5; King, 99-106, (Preface) iv; McKenzie, 
107-17; Wood, 136; Jacobus, 163-4; Ashworth, 295; Jaggar, 336-8; Weston, 356, 
444-6; G. Anderson, 367-9; Mackenzie, 382, 384; Palmer, 390-6; F. L. Anderson, 
414; Hayes, 447-9; Poteat, 453-4; Vose, 458; Bitting, 463; Thorp, 471-3; F. D. 
Huntington, 474-5; Richards, 478; Riggs, (Preface) viii-x; Preface, v, vii, viii. 

Analysis of the Gospel. (¥F. L. Anderson). 


Preface, 414-5. 
General Analysis, 415-6. 
1: 1-18, 416-8. 
I: 19—4: 54, 418-21. 
5: I—I2: 50, 422-9. 
13: I—20: 31, 429-35. 
21: 1-25, 435-6. 


Suggestive Studies and References. (Beardslee). Chapters 1-21, 437-43- 
St. John in All Ages. King, 99-103; Hayes, 447-8; also 481-3. 























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